No sooner have we all mastered blogs, podcasting, video-blogging, e-zines, and the latest social media networks like Pinterest & Instagram, than along comes new stuff to get our heads around like mobile app creation, Hangouts on Air, data journalism and Augmented Reality.
Digital journalist, Benji Lanyado, knows this better than most and has been in the vanguard of many new technologies and techniques.
It was Benji who, three and a half years ago, pioneered the concept of the TwiTrip for the Guardian newspaper when he created live interactive travel features by turning up in a destination and asking his twitter followers for suggestions on what to do and where to stay.
It was Benji, again in 2009, who showed us the potential of augmented reality apps.
It was Benji who last year first highlighted Drone Journalism.
And yesterday he reminded us there are always new ways to tell stories, with the launch of his Interactive Story service.
The concept is not entirely new. Some digital publishers have produced similar content formats, but usually one-off projects or presentations outsourced to digital art houses or large web development agencies. What’s unusual about Benji’s service is that he can produce these interactive stories by himself in just a few days.
You do see these things every now and then in newspapers who have big interactive teams, but I wanted to create a model where you can create an interactive story quickly and cheaply and offer it to more or less anyone.
Benji, who describes himself as a ‘Journalist & Developer’, has created his new format, which is designed to run on mobiles as well as desktops and across all browsers, entirely from scratch.
I left the Guardian a few months ago (although I’m still working freelance with them) because I actually wanted to learn how to code properly. It’s not complicated coding but it’s robust and works on iPads and PCs, Android phones and all browsers. Even on old versions of the Internet Explorer browser, which is wonderful!
Is it a format that other travel writers, content producers and tourism organisations may be using in the future? Benji thinks so:
I think it’s an inevitability that we have got to move beyond plain articles and videos and podcasts and galleries. They’ve been around for a century in digital terms. 99% of articles and blogs are copy-image-copy-image, and if the blogger is a bit more techy, maybe a video. This format draws all that together and makes it more fun. The reader can play around with it, drill down into this part of the story or that part, and move forward & backward within it.
Essentially what it is doing is building a website… for a story, or just a picture.
Do you think we will see more interactive storytelling like this?
Feature Image: Bigstock/NexusPlexus
Interactive Image: “Iwo Jima Chronicles” by Stefano Corso/ some rights reserved
Post Revisions:
- 2 November, 2012 @ 18:06 [Current Revision] by Alastair McKenzie
- 2 November, 2012 @ 18:06 by Alastair McKenzie
I think it is a fantastic idea! And travel bloggers will be happy to embrace it. Bring it on!
This concept reminds me a lot of the “shows” that MSN was experimenting with back in 1996 or 1997. I think it’s a useful embellishment of video in some contexts, and it’s possible that some individual bloggers might want to build blogs around the “interactive video” concept, just as some individual bloggers have built blogs around more conventional videos. And, of course, there might be a place for interactive videos on the pages of newspapers that already are using video clips.
One problem with video (interactive or not) is that, like television, it’s an inefficient way to communicate information. And it’s unclear whether readers of existing Web sites are enthusiastic about video. At an SATW Editors Council meeting in 2011, the travel editor of an important newspaper with a high-traffic Web site said that video hadn’t been a hit with her paper’s readers. (I’ve noticed the same phenomenon: At our site, relatively few readers click on embedded video clips.) So, if there *is* a future for “interactive storytelling,” it may be more at purpose-built “interactive storytelling” sites than at sites designed for readers.
I always loved his TwiTrips. I like the concept of the new Interactive Stories project. Will be interested to see how it develops.
Correct there are just so many ways to tell stories on line. Its truly amazing GREAT POST
I’m looking forward to taking a look at Benji’s project. For at least the past two years, I’ve been feeling like we (“content producers”) haven’t been keeping up with the potential of online/mobile to deliver stories and images in fresh ways. As you say here, we were just operating on the SEO-ified model of what works– or what we thought worked. But I have this feeling, and Benji confirms it, that we just haven’t tapped into 99% of the potential of digital.
I think the interactive stories are a nice idea but I think the future is in live information not something that takes a week to put together. We need to move above an beyond simply producing standard articles to an environment that encourages interactivity and intrigue. TwiTrips did that… an interactive story doesn’t.
This is something that Safari by Africa Geographic does really well in terms of interactive storytelling. You should check them out as well -> http://www.africageographic.com/safari
Did an interview with them awhile back – http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/is-safari-the-future-of-print-media/