Since Storify launched, it’s evolved as a browser-based tool for curating stories drawn from across social media. Ryan Cordell introduced the potential of the platform for telling stories while others explored its possibilities for use in the classroom, with Mark Sample noting its usefulness in managing the classroom backchannel and Ian Thomas sharing his attempt at using Storify for a course essay assignment.
Recently, Storify has expanded its authoring toolset, first with a Wordpress plug-in in January that makes it easy to create directly within a self-hosted blog. Now Storify has launched on the iPad with a free app that offers the promise of easy live blogging from conferences and more.
As Storify is based on the idea of dragging and dropping content from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other networks into a new linear post, it adapts rather naturally to the touchscreen. It’s a writing and content-creation tool that makes sense even on a device without a traditional keyboard. The tab-based system for browsing content is elegant and easy to minimize, and I only stumbled over a few interface hitches, including a publish button that’s a little too easy to trigger mid-post.
It’s hard to imagine this app fitting as well on a display any smaller than the average tablet, as one of the most important parts of the tool is the ability to filter quickly through a long Twitter search or conversation to find and preserve the key points. It’s hard to see more than ten tweets at a time, which can be hard for overpopulated hashtags (I experimented with it Oscar night and found myself wishing for a more expanded Twitter window). However, I can envision lots of scenarios where its on the fly curation would come in handy, particularly at conferences and workshops.
As a self-contained workflow, Storify on the iPad appears to be a live-blogger’s dream: it’s even possible to compose and send tweets from right within the app, although it’s not a full-featured Twitter client. The social media integration extends to publishing stories with announcements on Twitter and Facebook, so there’s no need for a desktop client at any point. This is one of the easiest iPad-based publishing solutions of its kind I’ve found, although it would be even better if it could directly integrate with a self-hosted Wordpress site (which so far it has resisted my efforts to do).
I’ll be trying out Storify on the iPad at my next conference to see if it helps me take another step away from hauling around the laptop. Have you tried Storify for iPad? What are your favorite tools for live blogging on mobile devices?
