Yesterday Twitter announced launch of Twitter Tales with 3 stories featuring @natashabadhwar (mother/filmmaker/photographer/writer from New Delhi), @caltrain (a crowd-sourced Twitter account) and @thebloggess (humour blogger). The stories were interesting but they were ‘copy written’ and that disappointed me. Personally I would have preferred stories in their own language and format – bringing out the real emotions.
This year we have seen similar initiatives from Google (Google Stories) and Facebook (Facebook Stories). Makes me wonder why all the leading web players are so desperately trying to prove that their brand adds value to human life. I have no doubt that they all do add value in their own unique way but none of them can provide all the answers. Also things on the web don’t work in silos – they’re non linear and interlinked. So a Twitter story is actually linked not only to Twitter but also to Google (where the tweets are listed now), Facebook (where the tweets/re-tweets appear) and to hundreds of Social Tools/Platforms. Unfortunately all three are trying to collect their own stories.
We’re living in an interconnected world and the new reality is about ‘AND’ and not ‘OR’. Celebrating human spirit is a great idea but it needs to go beyond individual platforms/brands. I hope the next idea that we see will be about human stories rather than Twitter/Facebook/Google (or for that matter any other brand) stories.
