Storify this

Ever since I came across Storify I've been trying to think of something it could be good for.

Storify lets users curate social media updates on a given topic into a story. This one, on editors, was pretty blergh but even this one on Syria has that same air of "and then he said and so I said but she reckons" to it.

Still, in my unquenchable thirst to mashuperate the content as much as possible, I've thought long and hard about how this could be good. As far as I can tell, there are two options:

1. Stupid and hilarious riots of conversations about something serious: like the conversation I had with my friend the other night, ostensibly about the Leveson inquiry, but really about cute lawyers at the Leveson inquiry. I'm, clearly, not kidding. All you need to do is look at spoof Twitter accounts like that of Jesus Christ, or serious humour publications like The Onion to see this would work. Hilarity (along, I suppose, with porn) is the lifeblood of new media.
2. Actual conversations, augmented with other media, that precipitate a tangible result: for example, you and I hatch a plan, via a Twitter exchange, to paint Gina Rinehart's house with a photovoltaic coating under an ironic cover of darkness. The curated, temporally arranged replication of the exchange is supplemented with maps showing our GPS locations throughout the exchange, soundbytes from the salesman who sold us the paint along with his headshot, footage we took on-site at painting time with infra-red camera, news reports on the incident following our apprehension by police and subsequent arraingnment, simultaneous rallying of friends and supporters via social media and telephone, shots from their protest outside the court, etc. Think of the possibilities for reportage of things like the Arab Spring protests, Brisbane council evicting the Aboriginal tent embassy, and so on! Compare those possibilities with the Syria story I mentioned, and you'll see there's a big opportunity there to make shit, well, interesting and informative.

That, as far as I can see, is how social media storytelling, like Storify, could be good. Incidentally, I made a multi-character story on Twitter in February last year—this might be the other decent way to use a system like Storify: for fiction entertainment.

In any case, the multiple media factor is the clincher. Curated social media conversations alone won't really cut much mustard if you ask me.