Nothing is more frustrating than trying to find the latest gossip via social media, having to go back and
forth between facebook, twitter, tumblr, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a place that combined all of these and made these searches easier? Well there is, but whether or not it’s actually easier, I’ll let you decide.
Storify is a way to put stories together using social media outlets. You come up with your title and figure out what you want your story to be about, and Storify will provide you with the tools to search the various social media outlets, and you choose what stories they pull you want to add to your story. You arrange them the way you want and you can credit any tweets you use and then publish it. Sounds pretty awesome right?
Well, the downside is that it’s going to be kind of difficult to find tweets and facebook posts, etc, that are about hard news events, not impossible, just difficult. You also have to have an account with Storify, which, as we learned in our class, is very hard to get. It took me at least a week to get the invite, but I want to say it was even longer than that. Another problem with Storify is what are the odds that the story you’re looking for has already been made in Storify? Chances are it hasn’t been done yet, so in an effort to save others that effort you create your own so that you won’t have to scower the social media scene by hand. In reality though, the effort it took you to create that story will probably have been even more effort than it would have taken you to just look it up separately.
I think the idea behind the program is a good one, but I think it’s more useful for someone who is looking to create these stories than it is for someone who wants to use these stories, at least until it becomes less selective in its invites. When it becomes open for everyone to use, then I think it might rise in popularity, but until then, it’s a little stunted.
And since I did get an invite eventually, I did create a story so here is mine: The Hunger Games
