Share your ideas about the future of mobile storytelling

Prakhar Shivam
3 replies
Hi makers! 🙂✋ We all have seen the rise of story format beyond usual videos and images, which will continue to grow more and more. Story format has offered a new layer of abstraction which adds interactivity and engagement possibilities on top of a unique synthesis of videos, images and texts. While these platforms have named this new format as ‘Stories’, most of these stories have no essence of storytelling or narrative. This might be because of the intent with which these tools/platforms have been built is to hook users in passively consuming mostly other people’s daily ephemeral moments. While there are few stories created by creators and brands which are amazing, those are created on tools other than those offered by platforms on which stories are being shared. You all might have also seen a recent surge of apps which offer unique story templates to create beautiful stories. So, there’s certainly a sweet spot where there’s a huge demand for a native storytelling tool and platform which includes the essence of storytelling along with offering new forms of interactivity and engagement. Below are the few pros and cons of the current story format. 👇 Current Story Format: Pros: > Ephemeral (Allows to share more frequently without any hesitation or fear) > Quick and easy to use > Instant feedback and interaction (Views, Reactions and DMs) > Reposting others stories > Interactivity and fx (Stickers, Filters, Type, Live, Boomerang etc.) > Saving stories (Image/ Video format) Cons: > Archive is a very limited functionality to ensure that stories remain permanent > No option to draft or preview stories > No option to share stories on the web > Lacks context between interactive stickers and the visual (Image/ Video) being used in a story > Limited fonts support > No support for stock image/video usage in stories > Linear structure > Most stories lack storytelling arc/ narrative What do you think about this idea and space? 🤔

Replies

Ildi Xhaholli
@prakharshivam I also wanted to chime in on this discussion. Not sure if i'm directly answering your question but i will say that two products which I really liked that kind of followed the "stories" format are Sip News by @rrhoover and the PH team + Hardbound by @nbashaw. Don't think those products are still active but they were definitely telling stories in a unique manner which felt very native to mobile. I really enjoyed both and am very sad they no longer exist. Maybe we can get some comments/insights from Ryan and Nathan on what they learned from the experience of building out both products. Also would love to check out some other products utilizing this format if anyone else has suggestions.
Ryan Hoover
Interesting topic, @prakharshivam. Not a direct response to your question but I'm interested in the future of audio/voice-based storytelling. Smart speakers are on the rise and AirPods combined with location-awareness will unlock AR audio (e.g. Detour was before its time). I'm not sure what will emerge but there's never been a better time to build something for the ear.
Prakhar Shivam
@rrhoover I have a very outrageous idea related to audio/voice-based storytelling. I too believe that there's a something in this space needed for the ear, but I still feel that there are a lot more use-cases, frequency and interactivity for audio-visual stories than audio/voice-only stories.