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Storify (discontinued) Reviews & Insights

Score8 out of 10

34 Reviews and Ratings

Storify (discontinued) Reviews

21 Reviews

Storify is a Time Saver

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Storify to keep up with #ATchat, a group of assistive technology professionals and students who share field knowledge and personal viewpoints during scheduled question and answer sessions. Reading through the archived responses allows me to glean resources when I have time. Using Storify gives me a sense of the challenges other AT practitioners face in educational settings. I can also follow up with personal contact with people who have tackled the types of tech issues I face daily. Storify helps me feel connected.

Pros

  • It collects a story thread from a live chat.
  • It allows people to tap into a group discussion, even after the fact.
  • It's a great means of finding links to targeted professional resources.

Cons

  • I look forward to Twitter opening up the character limit. As it is, a Q & A session can feel superficial because the answers need to be so brief.

Likelihood to Recommend

Storify is well suited to connecting far-flung colleagues. It appeals to working professionals who may not be able to participate in the conversation in real time, but value the information being shared. Storify has provided me with many useful tips and links and can be compared with a recorded Webinar in terms of quick access to pertinent information.

Once Upon a Storify

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Storify is being used by the communications department. It addresses the challenge of visually portraying our social media program to our board members.

Pros

  • Pull media from all online sources
  • Provide links for easy access to content
  • Display content in a pleasing and straightforward format

Cons

  • Better searchablility of web content
  • Notification if links in stories are no longer active
  • Suggestions for similar Storify users to follow

Likelihood to Recommend

In my experience, Storify is best used for visually portraying a multi-media conversation and highlighting resources.

Using Storify as a journalism education tool

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Storify is being used in my Convergent Journalism II class, which is our capstone journalism class. I require all my students to produce one Storify news story, where they have to cover a current event via social media evidence. This assignment teaches students how to use social media for evidence and facts. We spend time in class working with Storify, conducting searches via Storify and, once students get comfortable using Storify, they begin working on their individual stories.

I have also talked with some of my colleagues who teach other journalism and social media classes, and they are assigning Storify assignments in their classes for the first time this fall.

Pros

  • Allows journalists to search diverse social media outlets.
  • Enables journalists to cover social-media related events as they unfold.
  • Makes writing online stories easy, with very simple skills.
  • Allows journalists to create accurate stories with evidence/examples from YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Cons

  • Maybe a more detailed search engine/method.
  • It would be nice if we could search Facebook/Instagram, etc. even if the user does not have a FB/Instagram account.
  • Offer users a simple video tutorial on how to conduct searches for various social media.

Likelihood to Recommend

I am already recommending Storify to my journalism colleagues and at least three of them are using Storify this fall based on my recommendation. I have also recommended it to a colleague who teaches strategic communication, as Storify has great potential for advertising & PR.

Storify Your Sports Recaps to Capture Real-Time Fan Emotion!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Storify in several different capacities, most notably as a recap of each one of our football games. We curate social media activity from fans and commentators as the game is happening, resulting in a recap that displays all of the real-time emotion of the ups and downs of the game, presented from a fan's perspective. This form of a recap results in much more engaging and fun for fans to read than traditional sports recaps.

We also use Storify on a smaller scale to provide weekly snapshots of what happened across all of our 19 sports properties.

Pros

  • Storify displays images and video quite well in its stream, fully capturing all of the different media users of social are deploying across Twitter, Instagram, etc.
  • Storify also does a nice job embedding full YouTube videos and links to editorial content, integrating it seamlessly into the feed in a visual manner that is easy to digest.
  • Our Storify stories embed nicely into our website, enhancing our game coverage by appearing on the same pages as the game stats, highlights, etc., while also allowing us to surround the content with our own advertising.

Cons

  • Storify should add a Tweetdeck like function for live content curation. During a game, I have a Tweetdeck window open to monitor multiple search terms and accounts, and when I see something I want to add to my Storify, I have to manually type that term or handle into Storify to pull it in. Content isn't as "discoverable" as it could be.
  • Storify could pull in content more quickly. From the time I see a post published to the time I'm able to access it in Storify is usually ~20-30 seconds, and sometimes longer, which is an eternity when curating reaction to a fast-paced, live event.
  • The notify feature is funky and it's harder to notify ALL users who have been featured in a Storify once you get beyond the first handful that are available in the pop-up "notify" feature.

Likelihood to Recommend

Storify is particularly well suited to a narrative collection of social posts. It is wonderful for telling a story. It also does a great job of displaying text AND image posts in a single stream in a way that is easily consumable.

It is not as good for non-linear needs such as general insights from a conference or convention, for example. There are better solutions on the market like Tint or RebelMouse.

Storify is an asset for social media content gathering!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Storify has been a vital asset for my line of work. The user experience has been nothing but a tremendous godsend for gathering content together for projects. I have used Storify many times to help gather social media content together. Storify has been a very reliable tool to help your business gather content. I have used Storify in not only for my current employer but companies I have worked for in the past and it has been such a great marketing tool. I will continue to use and share my experience with Storify with colleagues and friends.

Pros

  • Excellent content gathering capabilities
  • User experience
  • Helpful customer support

Cons

  • No weaknesses

Likelihood to Recommend

Storify is a very well suited program to gather content in any capacity. I have used Storify in different employer settings and the experience has translated well across different work situations. The program works especially well in newsroom/journalism settings but it has also been an asset in regards to digital marketing.

The (Many) Benefits of Storify

Rating: 9 out of 10

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my role as Assistant Director, Alumni Marketing and Communications at the Harvard Business School, I use Storify on a weekly basis to capture our social media activity on Twitter. I wouldn't say it solves a problem. Rather, it provides us with a great opportunity to better engage with our alumni.

Pros

  • Provides a way to chronicle engagement in a linear fashion
  • Is a great way to display user-generated content.

Cons

  • There are times when the site is down and this can be problematic.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's great when it comes to event coverage. See http://storify.com/hbsalumni/hbsreunion2013-day-1.

Storify Effectively Curates Social Media

Rating: 10 out of 10

Pros

  • In today's world, some stories break or even take place on social media. Storify allows journalists to easily curate these conversations about news and shape them into stories.
  • Storify's interface is easy to use and can be taught in minutes. My college journalism students take to it quickly and love working with it.
  • Storify can employ any social media that I can think of. If a story is being discussed in the social media world, you can find it in words, photos, videos, etc.
  • Telling stories through Storify is a creative process that I see becoming more prominent in the future.
  • Products you create in Storify are easy to embed or use for other purposes.

Cons

  • Because Storify is a new way to tell a story with so many possibilities, it would be great if Storify had guides or examples of effective stories for different purposes for people to look at. Some people are a bit overwhelmed and don't deliver a great product. I have had to create these for my students.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would recommend spending some time familiarizing themselves with the interface and experimenting. After they have a feel for what can be done, they should look around at what others have done, especially those more experienced with telling stories.

A Tool for Documenting Stories

Rating: 10 out of 10

Pros

  • Storify has allowed me to gather communications and media coverage around particular stories and present them in a clean, attractive, user-friendly, web-based format that can be used by a wide variety of people at my workplace, from my department director to a hospital CEO to a university department head.
  • Storify provides built-in tools that allow me to easily search for relevant content across the web, from Twitter to YouTube to media stories on Google News.
  • Storify's plug-ins and quick buttons make it easy for me to notice an article, video, or other relevant content and without even going to Storify itself, add to stories or save it to my personal collection to be added to stories later.

Cons

  • When using the items stored in my "private collection," I often find that items I have already dragged and dropped into story packages remain listed, and when I try to delete the items, so they won't clog up the list, I often am presented with an error message.
  • I wish that there was the ability to have more control over item previews, such as choosing or uploading an image or editing text if, for example, that preview material is not accurate because the software isn't "seeing" or importing in the best way. Facebook (personal accounts and Pages) allows this and it's allowed me to put in proper descriptions or a more representative image or headline when appropriate.
  • When I go to my account profile, the initial view is only of my three most recent story packages; if I want to see more I have to click "See All." I would rather see at least 6. Having the option to switch to List view (as a default) would also be nice, as often I am updating multiple packages and saving even one click is helpful.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would advise that Storify is easy to use and includes many built-in resources, such as search tools, but that its application can be improved even more by combining it with other tools such as Google News (also accessible in Storify, but using standalone site is easy), Twitter (corporate and 3rd party) search tools and media management / "clipping" services like Vocus.

Using Storify to Increase Your Organization's Brand

Rating: 10 out of 10

Pros

  • Storify is a really clean and cool way to demonstrate the use of live-tweeting at an event. Whenever we hosted galas or organized huge events, we would gather all of the Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter posts using the same hashtag and create a story. What's nice about this is you can choose which posts you want to include or omit. Once you create it, it tags everyone that's mentioned -- which is great because it streamlines your time -- and you can easily import the finished Storify in WordPress. This made it easy to include in our blog.
  • Storify can make your organization look pretty social media savvy, which is what people would tell us whenever we used it. It's also a fun way to tell a story in real time without having to invest too much effort in writing an old-fashioned blog.
  • Aside from using Storify to strengthen my organization's brand, I've learned that it can be an effective educational tool. I've used it to learn more about a news story by gathering tweets using the same hashtag. It's fun to see how a story unfolds in real time!

Cons

  • Storify picks up all of the retweets, which can be repetitive and confusing because sometimes people retweet hours after the event. I like how you can change the order of the posts in the timeline, but it would be nice if there were filters to eliminate retweets and specific posts.
  • When I was using Storify, it didn't gather all of the Facebook posts that were out there using the same hashtag. They should improve their search functionality to include as much as possible.
  • You have to drag posts in place, which can be tedious. It would be nice if Storify organized everything for you, and all you had to do was eliminate the posts you don't want to ad.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would recommend that someone using Storify should have a social media strategy before investing any time in it. Also, Storify works best when coupled with events. There should be a plan to live-tweet, a hashtag and a way to communicate to people that you and your organization are capturing moments on Twitter, Instagram, etc. It would also be helpful if the organization has a platform to schedule tweets, such as Sprout Social or HootSuite, to pre-program tweets before an event.

Strategic Storytelling Using Storify can be a Happily Ever After 2.0

Rating: 9 out of 10

Pros

  • Event Storytelling
  • Campaign-specific aggregation
  • Validation of engagement for social media influencers participating in conversation

Cons

  • Easier search within platform to find items for storyboard inclusion.
  • Additional suggestions of Storify users to follow.
  • More regular engagement within Storify user community.

Likelihood to Recommend

My advice is to try Storify. Look at your marketing and PR goals and see how storytelling using this tool can be deployed to assist in achieving your goals. Then, build a tactical plan and play with it. The drag and drop functionality of the tool can make a story appear with relatively short time investment. It is then sharable and usable throughout other digital vehicles. It may not work for everything but it is a great way to compile campaign and event experiences when using a hashtag or tracking website articles for your intiatives in one place that can be shared to promote your effectiveness, communicate fun at an event and digital savvy to get others excited to participate with your organization.