Storify opened itself for public beta testing on April 25, 2011. According to Storify, “stories have been viewed more than 13 million times on our site and across the Web since our private beta launched at the end of September 2010. We had 4.2 million views just in March, our biggest month yet.“ Those numbers were hit during the closed beta. However, it doesn’t shock me as the online software is nothing short of amazing.
My first opportunity to use the software was in January, 2011 during the closed beta testing. On January 25, all hell broke loose in Egypt. The first major political revolution of the 21st century was underway with social media at the heart of it, and there I was, a Middle-East blogger trying put useful information in the hands of my readers. A few days before, I had saw something new. France-24 had posted a live-blog about events in the Middle-East. Noticing that it was branded (i.e. not a France-24 website feature), I clicked on the Storify link that took me to the site. After a quick look-around, I quickly signed up for the service.
Here are some of the key features I noted:
• Storify aggregates almost everything: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and more.
• Writers can monitor the social media right from the interface.
• It is extremely easy just to drag and drop information into your story.
• The Java embed feature means that you can stick your story almost anywhere.
Storify proved itself ideal for live-blogging during significant events. One of the things that makes Twitter great is the fact that it is so completely open, but this also makes it difficult to deal with in times of crisis. When a world event explodes, like the revolutions in Egypt, or the tsunami in Japan, it becomes extremely hard for casual users to contextualize and comprehend stories using social media. Storify allows the journalist, blogger, or storyteller to do just that. Authors can sort through the dross and create meaningful works in real-time from the avalanche of messages. Storify does Twitter and it does Twitter well.
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