No sooner had blogger “Nien” written these words:

… social media is all about the person and telling the their story. I think it’d be a trip either adapt a novel that’s told through Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Flicker, blogs and whatever or write an entirely new novel using the same devices…

… than the above appeared on the Chicago Tribune’s headcandy, A Modern Day Romance (using Facebook’s News Feed feature as a narrative device).

Of course, about 5 billion commenters jumped on the headcandy poster to point out that the Facebook News Feed is in reverse chrono order — with the most recent items appearing first, but it was a cool idea.

It has been awhile (March) since Part 2 of this series. The convergence of social media and storytelling is hugely fascinating to me, but something prevents me from blogging more about it. Maybe I just want to do it justice.

Although myriad examples of storytelling in social media can be found out there, Heekya is the first one I’ve seen that blatantly states its connection to storytelling. It calls itself a social storytelling platform and claims it will “change the way you create, share, and discover stories.”

Heekya wants to be known as the Wikipedia for stories.

Kristen Nicole of Mashable writes of Heekya:

Currently in private beta, a new service called Heekya is joining this larger development trend [the trend of approaching social media’s potential] with a story creation tool that doesn’t require direct social interaction but taps into the web community as a whole for the rendering of a given project, which can be created and recreated over and over again, by any number of users. In the video below, Heekya gives the example of a friend’s wedding, which is documented by the bride and groom and filled with photos, text and videos.

For the collaborative bit, guests from the wedding can take the Heekya story created by the bride and groom, and add their anecdotes, images, and videos as well. From this stance, a story can be recreated from several different vantage points, and distributed through multiple channels as a custom narrative by each person. Heekya seems rather simple to use, and its import and sharing capabilities will be key to its success—the easier it is for any given editor to pull from their existing content from across the Web, the more accessible Heekya becomes to a very wide range of users.

Over at threeminds, Marta Strickland asks: “Will ‘Social Storytelling’ Hit The Mainstream? She compares Heekya with previous attempts at collaborative storytelling, Penguin Books’ We Tell Stories project and The L Word’s partnership with FanLib to sponsor a contest in which fans submitted scenes. Strickland suggests Heekya may become a more compelling example of exploring storytelling as it relates to the social web.

Here’s a video about Heekya (OK, if the video doesn’t work, go to the source):
Heekya: Wikipedia for Stories from DavidAdewumi on Vimeo.

Nipping at the heels of the Heekya debut is word that Roxio is launching an online storytelling platform.

Visit Worldwide Story Work

Just got an e-mail over the weekend from Shawn Callahan of Anecdote.com reminding me of the social networking group on Ning, Worldwide Story Work, described as “a community of story practitioners focussed on the application of story-based techniques in organisational settings.”

I joined the group just over 6 months ago when it had just 50 members; I’m delighted to see it now has 247 members (you’ll see from the badge above that this number has continued to grow).

My neglect of Worldwide Story Work comes from my general problem with push vs. pull technology. I respond much better to the “push,” such as e-mails like Shawn’s that remind me to do something, than to the “pull” of Worldwide Story Work itself. So, good for Shawn for using the push to remind me to visit Worldwide Story Work and to initiate the pull of getting e-mail notifications when someone begins a new discussion on the site. I also tinkered with my profile and posted a blog entry about my upcoming Q&A project.

With the exception of a period in junior high, I’ve never really kept a journal (I think I may have anticipated the Internet because I wrote my journal back then as though it would be read by the public.)

But beginning in early March 1993 when we first got on the Internet, my cousin/best friend and I have maintained an intensive e-mail correspondence that is tantamount to journaling. We’ve shared our stories and told each other just about everything over these 15+ years. We used to share this stuff by phone; I can now recall only two phone conversations we’ve had in 15 years. She just told me a poignant story about failing to connect with her husband at the airport.

We’ve tapered off some in recent years. The novelty has worn off, and we’re both busy.

But I’ve noticed a new phenomenon recently. We’re both fairly avid Twitter users, and we now seem to be letting the micro-blogging of Twitter stand in for the intensive e-mail journaling of old. If we forget to to tell each other something, we’ll often catch up through Twitter Tweets. She’ll often ask me to elaborate on something I’ve posted on Twitter.

After she returned from the same trip where she feared her husband hadn’t arrived at the airport to pick her up, she detailed her travels to me, as we usually do.

But I found myself lazily responding: “Anything that’s new in my life, you can probably find on Twitter.”

I think I’m sad about losing my journaling outlet even though I like the shorthand of Twitter.