A thumb on the nozzle of the internet firehose

April 28, 2011 10:11 AM

Storify is a new social media platform that makes it easy to assemble and winnow Flickr photos, tweets, Facebook posts, Google search results and URLS into a coherent story. It went into public beta on April 25th.

Previously: FPPs based on private beta storifies, @MayorEmmanuel and Curator of the Revolution.

posted by msalt (17 comments total)

At the first link, it says "Here's how I used Storify to create this post." But I don't see where the "here's how" part is. Am I missing something?
posted by acheekymonkey at 11:00 AM on April 28, 2011

I like this.
posted by grobstein at 11:08 AM on April 28, 2011

All I could think of while reading this was the recent stories about the CIA/FBI using social media to "create personas with a deep backstory". And don't forget viral marketing.
posted by DU at 11:19 AM on April 28, 2011

Could we please add Storify to the list of social app links that we can display on our profiles? tia

Just getting that out of the way.
posted by cashman at 11:28 AM on April 28, 2011

> At the first link, it says "Here's how I used Storify to create this post." But I don't see where the "here's how" part is. Am I missing something?

Yeah, I had that too. Switching browsers might help, or not. I guess they haven't had the time to do any testing, or something.
posted by bjrn at 11:38 AM on April 28, 2011

With every new "social media" "platform" that comes out, I'm amazed that there's anything left to scrape at the bottom of the barrel. Or that there's any nounify or verbr names that can still be used with a straight face.

Sadly new tech has made these things so cheap to build that when this bubble pops, it will have sucked in so little money (at least compared to last time) that almost no one who doesn't live on the internet will notice.
posted by tempythethird at 12:01 PM on April 28, 2011

So...it puts a bunch of stuff on a page?
posted by sageleaf at 12:12 PM on April 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

It makes it a lot easier to assemble social media elements into a story. The end result may not look much different than any blog post or web page, but it's a lot easier to get there with a drag and drop interface.

The first link Storify has all kinds of tweets, flickr photos, facebook pages, search results, etc. In the Storify interface, you have a search screen on your left with buttons for each of those. You look through results and drag any you like into your story on the right. It preserves attribution, automates lick through to the source, andgenerally saves a lot of hassle.
posted by msalt at 12:18 PM on April 28, 2011

Actually, it automates click through to the source. But lick through might be kind of fun, too.
posted by msalt at 12:19 PM on April 28, 2011

It seems you have to have a twitter account to use this?
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 12:22 PM on April 28, 2011

Not sure. I signed up on a different email account, but forgot I had a different twitter on that one.
posted by msalt at 3:38 PM on April 28, 2011

So, if I understand this right, this is essentially a great way to document internet drama that spans over multiple mediums?
posted by mccarty.tim at 3:57 PM on April 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Aren't there any other sites that do this kind of thing?
posted by bz at 4:47 PM on April 28, 2011

So any amateur can make a 'story' that is as empty as any superficially-researched story? So how's that a plus for the web? Doesn't that just make it harder to find stuff that has real nutritional value? There aren't enough vacuous empty-headed cottonCandy sources already?
posted by Twang at 8:52 PM on April 28, 2011

Prostituting your private life has never been this fun!
posted by Bas at 4:55 AM on April 29, 2011

Yes, this will make it easier for idiots to make web posts using social media. Why, we ought to hate on InDesign -- it enables so many fools to create magazines and websites! And word processors, hey when people had to TYPE slowly and methodically, there was so much less bad writing in the world.
posted by msalt at 9:31 AM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I have to say it was pretty handy for the unfolding storyline on twitter in the Sean Powers laptop post. I guess it's pretty nice to be able to extract a narrative easily from huge heaps of random babble.
posted by bjrn at 10:47 AM on May 15, 2011