Everyone Has Their Own Story To Tell

On September 16, 2011 in a post titled Curation Sensation I reviewed Scoop.it .  At the time Scoop.it was in beta format but they have now gone public.  I continue to add information to all three magazines, All Things Caldecott, Gone to the Dogs and Ballad of the Northland, for which I am curator.  It is very simple to use; Scoop.it sends suggestions which I can publish or discard or I can add my own by clicking on a Scoop.it bookmarklet.

Having read about Storify in several posts made on Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day I decided to compare the two curation tools.  According to their site, Storify helps its users tell stories by curating social media.


To sign up for Storify enter a username, password and email.  Once you agree to the terms of service the next page references the site's privacy policy.  You can also sign in using your Twitter account.

Once you are logged in you can create a story, go to my stories or edit and enhance your profile and settings or logout.  When creating a story the browsers best supported by this service are Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox.  After selecting create a story the following page appears.

First enter in a headline and a description; the headline will determine your permalink.  Next search the social media that will carry information about the topic that is covered in your story.  Enter in a keyword in the search box and click the magnifying glass icon.  You can search using that term in Storify, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Google, a URL for an RSS feed or embed a URL for a link.  When you click on the + icon at the end of the social media suggestions, it offers users the opportunity to edit what media is searched; Breaking News, Sound Cloud and Instagram can be added.

If you identify a source that you want to appear in your story double click on it.  It shifts to the left side of the screen.  Or you can drag it over.  When you mouse over the item a small box appears above it stating that by clicking  you can add text for context.
That text can be bold, in italics, underlined, struck through, linked to a URL or made into a header.

When you have searched all the social media using your term, moved all pertinent items to your story and added any text that you desire go to the top and click Publish.  Above your story in the upper right hand corner are several icons that offer the options of:  post to external sites such as Wordpress, Tumblr, Drupal, Posterous or Mailchimp, you can notify people via Twitter that you have quoted in the story, delete or edit the story, email the story or embed the story using HTML code.  On the right you can copy the story permalink, the story shortlink or once again the story embed HTML.

At this point Scoop.it has my vote for the simple reason that I prefer the layout of my curation using that app, the ability to link it to a Facebook account, Twitter account, Facebook page, LinkedIn account, Wordpress or Tumblr page, the ease of adding what I find on the web with a simple click on the bookmarklet, the appearance of the dashboard for a user's account complete with a stats chart and their informative FAQ.  Storify does allow users to pick which media will be searched while Scoop.it searches the web for you.  Storify is a linear curation while the Scoop.it layout is more like a magazine with the curator determining the look and feel of the page.

This is my initial effort using Storify.  You decide; go to my link to the Scoop.it post and view my magazine, All Things Caldecott.