One of the problems of the digital age we live in, is the problem of plenty - there is so much content generated for an event, or an marquee issue, that its over whelming.
At the same time, there is no clean way to see a back story or a forward story, related to that event or issue. Some examples:
- Say someone has been convicted after a trial that lasted many years - how does a reader quickly get the entire backstory of what events led to this point, or what all has happened.
- Maybe there was a disaster - man made or otherwise and many events led to this point. Again, unless one is actively searching for this, how would the reader know?
- Politician promises are another great example - how about a way to track all the way from promise to delivery, across the trials and tribulations along the way.
- How about tracking a developing piece of legislation complete with linkage to the draft laws, public feedback, legislature reports and so on.
In order to make sense of the world, we need human curators (editors, subject matter experts) who are able to create these linkages for us. At the same time, the system should not allow pollution or hijacking, or the problem of plenty I described above. This is especially true of the hashtag - which suffers from these exact problems, and after a while a hashtag's importance is fleeting and is measured only by how much noise it produces (ie how many twits tweeted).
The StoryArc is born
We invented the #StoryArc as a way to solve these problems and provide a curated, clean, functional way to group (link) posts across time, and across TOP channels. Its a way for a reader to drop into a story arc at any point in time, either via a link that was shared or from a search engine and immediately see the full picture in terms of blurbs and then expand into each post as desired.
This is a very powerful feature that can completely change the way audiences interact with publisher sites. Instead of merely "reporting" on a piece of news in isolation, human curation creates a network map of what has happened over time, and this unlocks tremendous value for monetization.
Get a leg up over competition
Now a reader has a great reason to come to a publisher site, because there is a value add beyond just reading a piece of news. News is a commodity, its available at various sources. The same piece of news is reported by a gazillion sites, and show by aggregators and even coolly plagiarized by multiple small sites without so much as a by-your-leave. So what's your competitive advantage, dear publisher?
The StoryArc is a great way to bring readers and audiences back. Its a presentation format that puts things in context, that educates readers and increases the level of knowledge and puts power back into the hands of people.
Now that's something I'm willing to pay news sites for.
