A little update on the world of emerging story platforms ….

I apparently signed up for Capzles in March 2008, but it must’ve been in beta then because I don’t believe I ever blogged about it. Capzles is one of those maddening sites with no “About” page (another site calls it a venue for “creat[ing] entertaining social photo story lines very easily”). Thus, when I recently rediscovered it, the only way I could figure out how the platform tells stories was to use it (maybe that’s the point of no “About” page.) I threw together a quick-and-dirty Capzle timeline of four photos of me taken in the same place (on a hill high above the Columbia River). Three of the photos were taken on the same day, Sept. 27, a day we celebrate because it’s the day our offer was accepted on our wonderful homestead in Kettle Falls, WA, in 2008, 2009, and 2010. The fourth photo was taken in the same place but in May of 2009.

So, Capzles does make a nice little timeline. You can upload various kinds of media, choose a pretty background (or create your own), and insert background music (after waiting an hour to upload my musical selection, I can’t get it to play). While my Capzle doesn’t tell that much of a story, I can see the potential to tell stories with this platform. But I couldn’t find a way to edit the names of the photos or change the dates on them (instead of carrying the dates they were taken, they carry the dates they were saved on my hard drive — although the date on the first one, Dec. 2007, makes no sense since we’d never even heard of Kettle Falls in 2007 let alone been here.) Finally, I could not get my Capzle to embed properly here, so below is a screenshot rather than the real thing. I could not see any way to get help or support for issues like these.

Qwiki, in an alpha phase as I write this, does have an “About” page, which says:

Qwiki’s goal is to forever improve the way people experience information. Whether you’re planning a vacation on the web, evaluating restaurants on your phone, or helping with homework in front of the family AppleTV, Qwiki is working to deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human — via storytelling instead of search.

Qwiki offers “technology that transforms static information into interactive stories.”

Qwiki’s blog tells the story behind the concept (from Co-Founder and CEO Doug Imbruce):

About 18 months ago, I took a trip to Buenos Aires. Naturally, I searched the Web for information on the city, but what I found didn’t feel natural at all. There were lists of links; spammy, dense blocks of text; and a hodgepodge of videos and advertising. It took so long to assemble key facts about the city, I almost missed my flight. Amid this frustrating experience, however, I also had a moment I’ll never forget. I realized that what the Web needs isn’t another search engine. It needs story, a quintessentially human way to experience information.

The rest of Imbruce’s story is pretty interesting, too.

You can see the storytelling potential of Qwiki with the samples on the site, like this one about Claude Monet. I would describe a Qwiki as more than a slideshow but slightly less than a video. Unlike Storify and Capzles, the stories in Qwiki are not user-generated. Instead, the blog says, “Qwiki covers 2 million reference terms — including a wide variety of people, places, and things. You can type in any indexed term and Qwiki will generate an ‘information experience’ describing it.”

Storify continues to enjoy considerable buzz (I wrote about it here). As Nieman Storyboard reported in October, the site TBDCommunity used Storify to tell the story of the death of a man outside a District of Columbia nightclub (storified story here). The Storify story consists largely of tweets, with a few photos and a Scribd document. It’s a pretty fascinating way to see a crowdsourced story unfold. And, based on this interview with Storify’s founder, the nightclub-murder story epitomizes the use Storify was designed for.

And looming on the horizon … Projeqt, issuing beta invitations at this writing, and describing itself as providing “the tools and technology to tell your story. It provides a robust architecture, with unprecedented flexibility and possibilities. … Projeqt is about giving you the power to projeqt your story to the world.”

Also looming on the horizon is Intersect, currently in an invitation-only beta (I just got my requested invitation). Intersect brings together two major concepts — storylines and intersections. The founders hope this convergence makes “sharing on the Web more interesting, more enjoyable, and more powerful.” Here’s more about it:

When you post an Intersect story, your story lives on a storyline that evolves over time. Stories also have the potential to live at time and place intersections where they can be discovered by others and shared in new ways. You can make a story public or publish it just to the people you choose.