What’s so Great About Storify?

Stories have been shared with others since the beginning of time: Politics, What’s happening in various communities, and now (more than ever) what we’ve been eating for lunch.  Stories have allowed the reader to know what’s happening in the world; and now with the information age, we can be apart of that news in real time, playing a huge roll in how the world perceives the information out there. With all the information out there – people more than ever want everything streamlined, so they can see what’s happening a little easier.

As a social media junky – if someone tells me that the new and latest is the best and greatest, I’ll tend to jump the social bandwagon to have my name right along with the myriad of others who promote themselves, and their thoughts throughout the WWW, sharing, and hosting my thoughts on sites like RebelMouse, or the old standby’s just so people can see the name MisherMash amongst the thousands of other names that grace their Twitter feeds.

That is until today.

Storify: What Makes Them Different?

Today, I took to Storify, to see what the fuss is all about.  To find out what’s different with this platform versus the hundreds of others out there.  Truthfully?  I don’t get it.  I don’t see what’s so fascinating about this platform.

Storify says:

Storify helps making sense of what people post on social media. Our users curate the most important voices and turn them into stories.

What I found:

Jumbled data, and a miss-matched Hodge-Podge of articles, tweets and comments – for me, Storify doesn’t simplify the story.  It creates noise that is tough to filter through.

Many of the individuals I started to follow – had no content.  No stories, no followers, nothing.  And this leads me to wonder….are some of my “social friends” looking to tie their name to all platforms of the Interwebs like me, or did they fail to see the logic in this platform as well?

For me, the whole concept of streamlining information in one place is to make researching a topic easier not more difficult.  Then I thought: Perhaps it’s who I’m reading that is my biggest problem, so I “stopped by” CBC’s Storify page to see what they were posting in regards to the Pope’s announcement of retirement in hopes that my refrigerator light would come on, and I’d see all the deliciousness Storify had to offer, but sadly all I saw was more noise.

Storify: the concept

Storify has been available to the public since April of 2011 and has a current ranking of #5.  Its concept is simple: Search your multiple networks from one platform, then using a drag and drop system, place relevant stories of one related topic into one “story.” Other users can find information based on your title…and see all relevant stories in that feed for said story.

The draw I suppose is that users can pull info from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flicker, Google and other online links right into one “concise” storyline allowing others to access information in one place.  Of course, this information is all relevant based on the Storify Creator.  Users can grab random Tweets, or stories from unreliable sites to create a chain of information on a topic, or as Storify calls it; curating a topic for others to view. The information may not always be current or truthful, and therefore, not really a reliable resource to get information.  I could spend a little more time searching the web to find information based on topics from sources I rely on.  Yes, some of these sites (like Mashable), use Storify, yet I still found their content to be too busy and therefore unfriendly to read.

What’s so special about this platform?

While many of the articles I’ve read comment positively on Storify and the Can-Do perks, the ease of sharing, and how Storify encompasses everything you need in one handy dandy place – I still fail to see the attraction, and wonder what exactly is the draw to yet another home on the web to streamline my thoughts and stories.

Could I be an old fashioned girl, content with Twitter Lists and Google search results for my research?  Does a Hashtag still “do it for me” in the ways of drawing out information based on one topic?

Maybe I just don’t get it.  Maybe my cup is full in regard to platforms and the sharing of information.

Do you use Storify, and if so – what’s so great about it?  Convince me.