Fiction is not atop my interests here on A Storied Career, but today, I’m dipping into two fiction-based story projects that have implications for storytelling outside fiction. Both of these are also mashups of fiction and social media.

Erik Hare has launched a fiction project called Mythnology, which he explains here. Here are some excerpts:

Many kinds of truth are best explored through fiction. … Mythnology is set up to be a novel written in blog form. … Each chapter, after the first three, is available only by subscription. I hope to develop a community of subscribers commenting and asking questions which help guide this process through to its completion. This should be a lot of fun as the process of writing a novel (really a novella) becomes a kind of performance art, as the ancient art of storytelling has long been. … The title Mythnology is a combination of Technology and Mythology. One is based on a system of faith where the other has a core of truth in it. … I happen to believe that myths, or stories that illuminate a grain of truth at the core of them, are the strongest connections between people. If a strong society is all about connections between people and people or people and ideas, our faith in technology is certainly going to test us in ways we probably do not understand very well yet. The ancient art of storytelling, or the crafting of myths, is how we usually fill the gaps.

Role Pages is “a fictional, in-character, role-playing social network where you can be anyone that you can imagine.” Here’s how the site works:

Our members include vampires, werewolves, demons, psychics, aliens, and elves. Sign up for an account, and tell the story of your own unique character by uploading pictures, videos, and written accounts of their adventures. You can also role play with our eclectic members, and participate in the creation of elaborate multi-player interactive stories.

Exploring fictional approaches can be an effective way to work through our storied realities.

This blog’s comment function has been temporarily disabled. If you’d like to comment while I’m working to restore it, please e-mail me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Earlier this year, Ning, the site that allowed anyone to create a social network at no cost, announced that it was ending its free service. Administrators (known as Network Creators) of roughly 300,000 Ning networks were faced with either paying for their networks or moving them to different platforms. (See details here.)

I belong to several Ning groups and have just begun to receive notices from administrators announcing their plans to deal with this transition.

John Caddell, Network Creator of The Mistake Bank, announced he was shutting the site down.

Shawn Callahan, Network Creator of Worldwide Story Work, asked members to contribute to the cost of the network. I have not yet learned if member response has reached the levels Shawn hopes for. UPDATE: Shawn writes: “… we had a very good response from members donating more than enough money to keep the site going. We have 500+ members, so it only needs a small percentage to help out to keep the whole thing going. Very similar to the amount of conversation you get in a community of practice. It would be interesting to see if the people who donate are also the people who speak.”

Kevin Cordi of The Storybox Project, told members he was considering either seeking grant funding or would find another platform for the network.

It’s unfortunate that Ning’s business model (primarily supported by Google ads) eventually put the company in such straits that these kinds of choices have become necessary. I always felt Ning was an excellent resource for those seeking to start their own online networks.

I hope we don’t lose more storytelling networks as a result of the transition.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Kate Bolick writes for The Altantic about a woman she knew peripherally at a former workplace. Bolick didn’t know the woman well — they worked in different departments — and both of them eventually left the company.

The woman later friended Bolick on Facebook, and in fact dominated Bolick’s news feed with tales and photos of her active and exciting social life. Next, the women, whom Bolick calls “S” in the article, embarked on a long-distance relationship with a man in London, and Bolick followed the narrative of their romance and eventual engagement. At about this point, Bolick writes …

… A year had passed since S had friended me. We never exchanged messages, or commented on one another’s postings, or saw each other in person (save for one early, awkward encounter in a furniture store, during which it took me a moment to place who she was). Yet I thought about her often, even when I wasn’t on Facebook, as I would any close friend in a similar joyful circumstance. More, in fact: her news thrummed inside my chest as if it were my own. I wondered where the wedding might take place, what she would wear.

Then, Bolick was in a house-sitting/pet-sitting situation with very limited Internet access. During a moment of access, in a torrent of e-mails, Bolick found one from a former colleague who announced that S had died. Bolick writes:

A loud sob broke out of me, like a bark. It was a frightening sound in that too-quiet house. I stood up, heart racing, and paced the rooms, switching on any lamp I could find. But the rooms weren’t familiar to me, and their features — shelves sagging with books I’d never read; ropes of garlic garlanding a cupboard; decades of dirt caking the floor seams — only enlarged my sense of unreality. Even the smudged windows framed a night so black that I could see nothing there but my own pale face. How do you cry for someone you hardly know?

Now here’s the kicker with which Bolick ends her article:
And for what was I crying? S or her story?

Wow. Nowhere have I seen better evidence that social media is storytelling media. Given that Bolick had met S, it’s possible Bolick was crying for the person rather than the story. Most likely, she cried for both.

But I immediately thought about all my friends on Facebook whom I’ve never met. (Out of curiosity, I calculated that 31 percent of my Facebook friends are people I’ve never met.) Two in particularly stand out as women I would most emphatically grieve for if they passed on. I can imagine feeling sad if any of my never-met virtual friends died, but I believe I would have the kind of emotional breakdown Bolick did about these two specifically. Why these two? Because I know their stories. I have gotten to know them, followed their lives, rejoiced at their triumphs, tut-tutted at the things that annoy them, and empathized with their difficulties.

Stories create powerful emotional connections.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

About a month ago, Facebook launched Facebook Stories to mark the addition of Facebook’s 500 millionth user.

Now Twitter is launching Twitter Tales, which the microblogging site describes as “a growing set of articles that highlights creative individuals and businesses from all corners of the world that help make Twitter awesome,” adding that Twitter expects that “the examples of great Twitter use will also likely inspire others to use the service in innovative and interesting ways.”

When I learned of Twitter Tales, I groaned, thinking these stories would be limited to 140 characters. But Twitter and Facebook seem to be playing a role reversal in their launches of stories and tales. Where Facebook Stories are limited to 420 characters, Twitter Tales are detailed narratives several paragraphs in length. Where Facebook Stories are stark text blocks, Twitter Tales are presented in a graphically attractive layout with sidebars and images.

For the next several weeks, Twitter plans to offer a new story to the Twitter Tales homepage that users can access by clicking on the Twitter Tales icon on the sidebar of the Twitter Blog.

The first three entries focus on:

• Life: @natashabadhwar is a mother/filmmaker/photographer/writer from New Delhi who sees Twitter as a form of self therapy
• Community: @caltrain is a crowd-sourced Twitter account where people can help others avoid pitfalls on their daily commute
• Humor: @thebloggess provides a witty and honest behind the scenes look into her blog writing

I continue to find it significant that these social-media giants are deploying stories to engage users.

Update (Aug. 20, 2010): Didn’t realize that Google also has stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Came across a couple of additional postings that relate to the upcoming Social Story: How To Tell Your Story Through Social Media Conference (Aug. 24 in Denver).

Anthony Townsend is annoyed that “There aren’t any stories” on venues like Twitter and Facebook. “Some conversations become really good stories,” he writes, “but unless you follow them in real-time you’re S.O.L. They dissipate and hang there in the cloud like a cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes.” Further:

… since there’s no way to link updates or layer metadata to create a narrative structure, you have to manually sort through timelines and excavate that structure like a cyberspatial Sherlock Holmes.

I know many who would disagree that no stories exist on social-media venues, but most would probably agree that social-media stories are fragmented and, as Townsend points out, useless unless followed in real time. Folks would also probably agree that the perfect social-media venue for supporting storytelling has yet to emerge.

When it does, Townsend suggests, it will become the Next Big Thing:

My forecast is — social networks and the real-time web are either a) going to morph into storytelling media that provide tools to construct narrative on top of the update stream, or b) are going to stop growing as people seek out a different set of tools that are better for communication and storytelling than social networks, which do a mediocre job at both.

(Part 2 of Townsend’s post discusses some venues that are moving in predicted directions — gaming and location-based apps.)

While we’re waiting for the perfect social-media storytelling mashup, Ian McGonnigal has offered a list of tips to apply to social-media storytelling He wrote a few months ago about “how critical storytelling is to successful brand engagement on the social web as well as at face-to-face events.” You can read more details of each tip in his posting:

1. Have a purpose.
2. Clearly articulate the theme.
3. Keep it simple.
4. Ensure your story has a structure and a well-defined plot.
5. Use the right tools to tell your story.
6. Engage your audience.
7. Choose the right protagonist.
8. Defeat the antagonist.
9. Communicate like a human being.
10. Be Authentic.

As I’m running this storied-brand-in-social-media series in conjunction with the upcoming Social Story conference, here’s the second in a series of videos about the conference from Sean Buvala. You can see the first in the series here:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Gregg Morris yesterday turned me on to what he thinks might be the first job posting ever to use “story” in the way this posting does. It is certainly the first one I’ve seen that does so. The posting is for the position of Social Media Specialist.

Here are some snippets showing how Cancer Treatment Centers of America seeks someone who can tell its story, as well as someone to begin his or her story with the organization:

Stories of Life. Stories of Hope.

Imagine a place where your talent can make a meaningful difference in peoples’ lives. Where a sense of mission and a promise to patients marks a culture of people who look forward to the challenge of each day … where you can help create stories of life, stories of hope, and amazing stories of triumph — big and small — that unite everyone around a worthy goal. That place is real. It’s why we are here.

Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA) is one of the fastest-growing networks of cancer hospitals in the country. We offer the most sophisticated forms of oncology treatment, combined with complimentary therapies that support the entire person. It’s a place where your contributions can create new stories that embody our exceptional standard of care known as the Mother Standard® model of care — meaning that all staff provides the same level of care to each patient that we would want for our own loved ones. And for those of you who can see how rich and fulfilling this mission-driven, patient-centric, cutting-edge work experience can be, we hope your story starts here.

Start your story at our corporate offices in Schaumburg, IL as a: Social Media Specialist … If you’re interested in starting your own story with us see our website at http://www.cancercenter.jobs/ for a full job description and to apply.

The job posting is interesting for several reasons. It recognizes the growing recognition of the connection between social media and storytelling — that social media at its best is essentially a storytelling media. The employer clearly recognizes stories as the primary way to convey its message (of life and hope). And the employer envisions a career as a story, as I discussed here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Though I am unlikely to be able to attend, my friend Trey Pennington is putting on a mighty tempting conference later this month. It’s called Social Story: How To Tell Your Story Through Social Media, and another friend, Sean Buvala, will present there. While I suspect that the conference will be oriented toward businesses and solopreneurs, I feel like most of the principles that apply to these groups also apply to individuals and job-seekers who want to tell stories in social media about their personal brands.

For example, Trey recently posted an entry on his blog entitled TIP: Use Facebook to tell your “who we are” story by giving fans behind-the-scenes access in which he wrote:

Wondering how to put Facebook to work building connections with prospects and customers? You can use unused photos from your catalog photo shoot to give catalog recipients behind-the-scenes access. When you do, you use the power of social media to help customers experience your “who we are” story for themselves. You make it possible for them to personalize your story and make it their own. Encourage comments. More importantly, ACKNOWLEDGE comments.

So how might we adapt this tip to an individual/job-seeker so that you “use the power of social media to help [employers] experience your “who [I am]” story for themselves? Instead of unused catalog photos, the individual could post photos of being engaged in a workplace project. And the individual can (and should) certainly encourage and acknowledge comments.

A while back, Georgina Laidlaw talked about some of these same principles of storied personal branding in a series highlighting characterization, plot, and narrative.

In the characterization piece, Laidlaw writes:

We all know that there’s a plethora of options for communicating your character though personal branding, including:

the channels you use

the language you use

your profile data

the photos you publish of yourself and others

your interests, pastimes, and the topics you focus on, including links and other content you promote

your frequency and depth of public engagement with others

the places you like to visit or meet others

The other side to the characterization coin is to work out which pieces of information most clearly define the key aspects of your character. Few of us have time to transmit every piece of the minutiae of our days or nights, so we need to choose what we’ll communicate. How do you know what will best illustrate your character to your contacts?

The answer for Laidlaw, she says, is to communicate things you’re passionate about.

Here’s an excerpt from the plot piece:

In a personal branding story, plot is news and events. If each day is an adventure in the story of your life, then each event has the potential to form part of the plot.

Storytellers leave certain aspects out of plot (no one uses the bathroom in a movie, for example, unless something crucial to the storyline happens in there). They do this because some events are irrelevant to the story they’re telling. Those events waste time and distract the audience from the critical pieces of the story.

So for you as an individual trying to build a personal brand, your plotline is your news: what happens every day, and what it means to you. If you have multiple plotlines (reflecting different facets of your life), those events may have a range of impacts on your life. Which parts you choose to communicate, and the ways in which you communicate them, is up to you as the storyteller.

And from the narrative piece:

…[N]arrative is the way you tell stories. It’s the glue that ties your characters to the plot events in your story. As well as elements like scene setting, narrative includes description, so we’ll deal with these aspects together.

You are the key narrator in your own personal branding story, though other characters may have a part in narrating from time to time (for example, a guest blogger narrates part of your brand story while you’re on vacation, or away at a conference).

Since you’re the narrator, the way you tell your story will be driven largely by your character. The channels you choose, and how effectively you use them to narrate your story, will also depend on your character.

While I have a bit of difficulty — in practice — in distinguishing the difference between Laidlaw’s plot and narrative concepts, I find this series an excellent treatment bringing together storytelling, social media, and personal branding.

I’ll be interested to learn the extent to which the Social Story conference views these concepts the same way Laidlaw does. I hope participants produce some meaty writeups for those of us who can’t attend.

In the days leading up to Trey’s and Sean’s conference, I’ll be posting more about this topic.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My blog feed runs on Facebook, where occasionally, my entries generate more comments than they do here on the actual blog.

Such was the case with my followup blog entry about Facebook marking its 500 millionth user by launching Facebook Stories. The entry generated a lively discussion on Facebook among me, Terrence Gargiulo, and Sean Buvala.

Terrence first wanted to know: “Do these read as stories? How would you characterize the range of ‘story responses?’”

My response:

Well, I think they present the same problem as the 6-word stories. These Facebook Stories are limited to 420 characters. So, my answer to your first question is “Some of them, yes.” The important thing though, I think, is that Facebook chooses to mark its 500 millionth user with some form of stories.

To which, Terrence said:

I agree. I think its wonderful that Facebook is inviting stories. Perfect … and there are endless trails of interesting events, occurrences, connections, relationship healing, etc… What got me excited is this is a huge amount of story data collected quickly from a large and diverse population with a clear, powerful trigger, that is resulting in a horde of stories. As aficionados and armchair anthropologists and social scientists, we have one of the best collections. We can see and understand what others think of as story … how they frame them … what they feel comfortable sharing when it’s a wider audience, etc… I’m interested in the richness of the story forms. Categorizing them as stories or not is probably not as useful for generating insights and understanding of how people interact with their innate story capacities and needs.

As you can see by my emphasis, I found Terrence’s point about this rich story-data collection very important. After all, outside of perhaps, Google, on what other site could we encounter so many users and their stories?

At this point Sean had chimed in. He hadn’t yet looked at any of the Facebook Stories, but as a story purist to whom a strict definition of story is important, he speculated, “I bet we will see metaphors, anecdotes and gossip, but not many actual stories.” Later, though, Sean came back and said, “Having looked at few, there are some real story gems in there.” He also agreed with Terrence that Facebook Stories “is indeed a lab. … there are windows of understanding present in all forms of narrative.”

In his initial comment, Terrence had also asked: “Are you aware of which stories pique more interest and why?” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, so I asked him to elaborate. Here’s what he said:

I’m curious to observe in myself and hear from others how certain stories co-mingle with our own experiences of Facebook. What stories am I attracted to? Why am I attracted? What’s the relationship between the strength of my experience and the experience of someone else … how often or does it trump even well-told (more formed) narratives even with the constraints of 420 characters? That’s what was on my mind. Any examples come to mind for yourself?

I took some time to explore Facebook Stories in greater detail. Stories are organized by these themes: causes, celebrities, college, communities, crime fighting, education, family, friendship, government, grief, health, lost and found, love, military, movements, music, natural disasters, parenting, peace, pets, politics, religion, rescues, reunions, small business, sports, support groups, travel, and other. I’m interested in whether the categories were established first, and users submitted stories around the categories — or if the opposite is true — users submitted stories, which naturally fell into these categories. I suspect the latter, which makes Facebook Stories all that much more interesting as social science.

It’s fairly clear which categories are likely to make for the most dramatic, story-like stories — natural disasters, grief, lost and found, rescues. The most heartwarming — family, friendship, love, pets, reunions. To answer Terrence’s question, those are probably the types of stories I’m most attracted to — because I always seek peak emotional experiences. The most humorous categories are — perhaps college and sports? It also strikes me that a fair number of stories on the site are not in English, and you can find a lot of repetition and a lot of non-stories. In most cases, I do not think these stories trump Terrence’s “well-told (more formed) narratives,” although I’m surprised at the emotional power some of these 420-character pieces offer.

Here’s a nice example — definitely a story — that appears in both the Natural-Disaster and Rescue categories:

When the earthquake destroyed Haiti, our girls were saved and taken to safety by a complete stranger that I found on Facebook. These girls were missing for over a month. I had no contact in Haiti and went to work making connections on Facebook with people around the world who were working there. I sent photos via Facebook, and I got a call saying the girls were found. They were sick, alone, hungry but ALIVE!

And a nice one from the Reunions section:

Through Facebook, I reconnected with a brother I hadn’t seen in 28 years and a sister I’d never met. My dad, who had 3 kids from a previous marriage, died in 1979, and I lost touch with my siblings who lived with their mom. I’d been trying to find my brother for years and was considering hiring a private detective. It was wonderful to see him again. He looks like my dad and me. Today we were all reunited.

Terrence had asked about “the relationship between the strength of my experience and the experience of someone else.” I found several stories in which the the strength of my experience matched the experience of others. Indeed, I was tempted to submit one or more Facebook stories but felt far too constrained by the 420-character limit (however, perhaps that limit means Facebook can collect more stories). I could have written about how (rather pathetically), Facebook probably comprises about 95 percent of my social life. I care deeply about Facebook friends I’ve never met. I wept when my husband told me last year that we had far exceeded our Internet data plan, and I would have to curtail Facebook use for a few weeks. I might have written something along the lines of this Facebook note in which I talked about how much my Facebook friendships mean to me (if you’re not on Facebook, you’ll probably have to join to read the note). Or about reconnecting on Facebook with my childhood best friend after 45 years and later having a face-to-face reunion with her. Or about how friends came together to share their grief and celebrate the life of a dear friend who died suddenly and very unexpectedly in May. Or about having been an early adopter (2005) of Facebook so I could use it to connect with my current and former students.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Updating my entry from Sunday that included a mention of Facebook stories: Facebook acquired its 500 millionth user today and decided to ficus not on those staggering numbers but on the stories behind them.

Hence, the social-media venue is launching Facebook Stories today.

Pretty significant when the biggest site on the Internet focuses on stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve seen plenty of Web sites that offer story prompts. In fact, I keep intending to create a Story Prompts section on A Storied Career.

But Plinky is the first story-prompt site I’ve seen that combines story prompts with social media.

In fact, Plinky doesn’t frame its prompts as prompts for stories or even writing — but rather for Web content. Plinky’s pitch:

Plinky makes it easy for you to create inspired content. Every day we provide a prompt (i.e., a question or challenge) and you answer. We make it simple to add rich media and share your answers on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

In addition to helping folks create content that they can share on the social Web, Plinky is a social site in itself on which users can follow each other.

I’m not sure how many of Plinky’s prompts really yield something worth sharing on social sites, but the concept is definitely interesting.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.