In the last month or so, a new storytelling platform, Storify, has emerged and is in beta preview. The platform is quite intriguing and promising; in its own words, “Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos, and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.”

Intriguing and promising indeed, but I couldn’t immediately think of how I might use it. Michael Margolis and Tim Carmody, however, are among those who dived right in, thus suggesting a couple of ways that users can tell stories on Storify. Both of these efforts garnered a fair amount of attention

Tim Carmody’s Lobbying For Followers On Twitter: A Love Story, in fact, had already enjoyed more than 5,700 views. As you might guess from the title, Carmody’s story tells of his quest to get some of his favorite people to follow him on Twitter. In particular, he tried this tweet to engage these folks:

I’m shameless: People I wish would follow me: @EileenAJoy @brainpicker @JadAbumrad @blacksnob @ThisMoiThisMoi @NathanBransford @digiphile

At the time of posting his Storify story, Carmody (who teaches the history and theory of writing at Penn) had gained follows from all but @brainpicker and @NathanBransford.

Carmody’s story exclusively uses tweets, with some narrative to fill in details.

Michael tried Storify as kind of a aggregator of his favorite tweets from the recently completed National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. He notes that the tweets are “not all presented in chronological order, but sort of tellin’ my own story.”

Like Carmody’s Storify piece, Michael’s is dominated by tweets, but he does also include some photos of the festival from yfrog and Twitpics.

These pioneer uses of Storify show some interesting ways to use this exciting new platform. I’d also like to see some Storify stories that incorporate a greater variety of social media.