Tag Archives: storify

New record for Storify as US bus monitor Storify gets more than 1.5m views

Digital storytelling platform Storify has announced that a Storify produced by US journalist and student Ben Doernberg, which curated the latest responses and reaction to a video in which a bus monitor is seen being taunted (there’s more on this story from the BBC at this link), has hit a new record for Storify by recording more than 1.5 million views.

At the time of writing the number of views stood at 1,575,345. More than $650,000 has also been raised after an Indiegogo page was set up to give the bus monitor a holiday.

See the Storify about the record here.

Tweetbot partners with Storify to allow Twitter conversation sharing

Tweetbot, a Twitter client app for iOS and a previous Journalism.co.uk app of the week, has added Storify integration.

Users of the iPhone and iPad Tweetbot app can now easily Storify a conversation they spot on Twitter.

There is no need to move away from Tweetbot to Storify, a tool to allow the curation of social media content, all is done with a swipe and three taps within the app.

Just swipe right on a tweet that is part of a conversation, tweet the conversation and it is automatically Storified.

If you don’t have a Storify account one will be created.

The 2.3 update was released yesterday. Those with the app can update, new users can download from the App Store for £1.99.

Here is a Storify explaining how it works.

Storify stories now on news reader app Pulse

Curated storytelling tool Storify has partnered with news reader app Pulse.

The move marks Storify’s first syndication deal and sees curated stories by Storify users such as Al Jazeera’s the Stream, the Washington Post and the White House communications team available on the social newsreader app.

Pulse, which is available for the iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire and Nook, allows readers to chose to add their favourite news providers and feeds giving a personalised reading experience.

A Storified blog post by the company explains how to add your Storify creations to your personalised Pulse app.

You can also see your stories – or any account’s stories – on Pulse by subscribing to the RSS feed at the top of Storify profile pages. Then call the feeds up from Google Reader on Pulse. You’ll be able to see all those accounts’ stories on Pulse from then on.
For more on the syndication deal see this Storify.

Tips for freelance journalists on National Freelancers’ Day

Today is National Freelancers’ Day. We have compiled a list of 10 things every freelance journalists should know.

We crowdsourced and gathered advice for freelance journalists from fellow freelancers and editors.

Here are some of the responses:

Storify gets a new look and promises ‘to revise the entire reader experience’

Storify has a new look, logo and functionality. The tool, which allows you to curate stories using elements from social media like tweets, Flickr photos and YouTube videos, is today rolling out its new features and promising to “revise the entire reader experience” in the coming months.

Building a Storify is smoother and the ability to narrate and explain your curated story is improved. You now view photos as a gallery and drag and drop from right to left. The system also seems more robust. I also tested closing a browser without saving while building this test Storify, which is all about the Guardian’s n0tice platform (the news group’s latest venture into hyperlocal which yesterday invited more users) and found my Storify had auto-saved.

Xavier Damman, Storify’s co-founder, explained the changes:

We’ve taken feedback from users and have rebuilt Storify on a stronger and more reliable foundation, which includes:

  • A new logo and new look. The search and the editor sides of the interface have been switched, and we have made it easier to write your own text into stories, and to add subheds, or headers.
  • An elegant new drag-and-drop functionality, which makes it easier to build stories, and to reorganise them.
  • A collapsed view of your Storify story while it’s being built, so you can see it all easily, and organise it better.
  • A revised Storypad bookmarklet that lets you gather information from all over the web for your Storify stories. You can add the material to a story at any time, and share your Storypad with other users.

The changes are explained in more detail using, of course, Storify itself below:

You can now add SoundCloud recordings to Storify

Storify and SoundCloud have joined forces, enabling those curating social media to add recordings posted on the audio platform.

Users of Storify, which allows you to drag and drop content from social media, including Twitter, Flickr and YouTube into stories, were already able to add AudioBoo recordings.

The addition of SoundCloud adds possibilities for journalists and those curating stories using Storify. Although the audio platform started out as a music sharing and commenting site, SoundCloud is increasingly used for spoken word.

The integration of SoundCloud in Storify provides a tactile experience in digital news consumption, particularly when using a tablet, and allows users to read and listen to stories, utilising SoundCloud’s visual commenting system to jump to a particular point in the interview or audio.

Journalism.co.uk added SoundCloud recordings in this Storify of news:rewired created on the day the audio platform was first enabled as a source. Both platforms were present at the conference, where Storify co-founder Xavier Damman (pictured above) suggested “journalists should be re-branded as information engineers” as they make sense of the noise of social media by filtering it into stories.

In order to add SoundCloud go to Storify / Settings (below your name icon in the top right hand corner) / Sources.

Storify adds slideshow view for blog posts, presentations and broadcasts

You can now view Storify stories as slideshows. The platform, which allows you to curate social media and web content, now lets you convert any Storify to a slideshow by simply adding “/slideshow” at the end of the URL of a Storify.

You can then embed the slideshow into a blog post or article. There are details of how to do that in this Storify blog post.

For example, Joseph Stashko has created this Storify on Steve Jobs’ stepping down as CEO of Apple. Here it is as a slideshow.

According to a post on Storify’s blog:

Slideshows were originally designed for TV, to make it easy to show a story on a monitor during a newscast or other show. But really, they could be used for anything – displays at live events such as conferences, or also for business and social media presentations created with Storify.

The full Storify blog post is at this link.

London riots: Five ways journalists used online tools

Since riots started in London on Saturday, 6 August, journalists – and many non-journalists, who may or may not think of themselves as citizen reporters – have been using a variety of online tools to tell the story of the riots and subsequent cleanup operation.

Here are five examples:

1. Maps

James Cridland, who is managing director of Media UK, created a Google Map – which has had more than 25,000 views.

Writing on his blog (which is well worth a read), Cridland explains how and why he verified the locations of riots before manually adding reports of unrest to his map one by one.

I realised that, in order for this map to be useful, every entry needed to be verified, and verifiable for others, too. For every report, I searched Google News, Twitter, and major news sites to try and establish some sort of verification. My criteria was that something had to be reported by an established news organisation (BBC, Sky, local newspapers) or by multiple people on Twitter in different ways.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, he explained there was much rumour and many unsubstantiated reports on Twitter, particularly about Manchester where police responded by repeatedly announcing they had not had reports of copycat riots.

A lot of people don’t know how to check and verify. It just shows that the editor’s job is still a very safe one.

Hannah Waldram, who is community co-ordinator at the Guardian, “used Yahoo Pipes, co-location community tools and Google Maps to create a map showing tweets generated from postcode areas in London during the riots”. A post on the OUseful blog explains exactly how this is done.

Waldram told Journalism.co.uk how the map she created last night works:

The map picks up on geotagged tweets using the #Londonriots hashtag in a five km radium around four post code areas in London where reports of rioting were coming in.

It effectively gives a snapshot of tweets coming from a certain area at a certain time – some of the tweets from people at home watching the news and some appearing to be eyewitness reports of the action unfolding.

2. Video

Between gripping live reporting on Sky News, reporter Mark Stone uploaded footage from riots in Clapham to YouTube (which seems to have inspired a Facebook campaign to make him prime minister).

3. Blogs

Tumblr has been used to report the Birmingham riots, including photos and a statement from West Midlands Police with the ‘ask a question’ function being put to hugely effective use.

4. Curation tools

Curation tools such as Storify, used to great effect here by Joseph Stashko to report on Lewisham; Storyful, used here to tell the story of the cleanup; Bundlr used here to report the Birmingham riots, and Chirpstory, used here to show tweets on the unravelling Tottenham riots, have been used to curate photos, tweets, maps and videos.

5. Timelines

Channel 4 News has this (Flash) timeline, clearly showing when the riots were first reported and how unrest spread. Free tools such as Dipity and Google Fusion Tables (see our how to: use Google Fusion Tables guide) can be used to create linear (rather than mapped) timelines.

If you have seen any impressive interactive and innovative coverage of the riots please add a link to the comments below.

Breaking News becomes a Storify source

Storify has partnered with Breaking News, the @breakingnews Twitter channel and news site, which is owned by MSNBC.

Storify, which allows users to create a narrative using tweets, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Audioboos, Slideshares, Facebook status updates and more as sources, will now include the option of adding Storify as a source.

You can add Breaking News as a source by going to settings within your Storify account. A breakingnews.com logo will appear alongside the images representing the above social networks and allow users to drag and drop content from Breaking News.

Breaking News in the Sources settings

Storify has also added a ‘Storify’ button allowing visitors to its site to take a news story and start to build a timeline.

Storify on BreakingNews.com

There is a Storify on the partnership here.

Storify launched in public beta in April, and was last month named winner of the Knight-Batten award for innovations in Journalism.