Who owns Storytelling?
Since the dawn of time humans have been telling Stories.
Nowadays we tell stories with our SmartPhones.
Good news is that these super computers in our pockets are full multimedia creation engines. Video shooting, taking photos and audio recording is as easy as email and social media.
We document our lives, gossip and connect with others — all via our SmartPhones. Though it wasn’t as big of a deal back in the 90’s — taking photos and videos of yourself — seems like the natural thing to do since the dawn of multimedia.
This process of telling stories with our smartphones even has it’s own name: Selfies.
Selfies give us control over our digital lives and a purpose. Selfies put ME at the center of the universe — and right next to me — my friends, celebs or whoever I choose to include in my selfie.
Selfies and social media have combined together to create (what oldies like me would call) Stories. Stories are sequences of short video clips and images — with text and goofy overlay “filters” sometimes overlaid on top.
Stories were invented by SnapChat, stolen by Instagram and now included in Facebook as well. So who “owns” Stories?
Cave walls are full of stories, the commedia dell’arte is based on storingtelling, Shakespearean plays abound and every Pop song written is itself — a story being told.
But is a marketing campaign — a story?
Maybe that’s where we have to put our foot down?
Maybe its time we (as potential customers) or sometimes referred to as “end-users” need to say “I’m not some camapign data point that you’re targeting with your Story!”
“Stop targeting me and start talking to me!” would be another way to say it.
We’ve run into all sorts of “story bots” over the past two years as we’ve been working on our Storytelling Beings.
Its gotten to the point where you can’t trust the term “Bot” as it means “automated spamming and pimping” to create more and more followers.
Here’s how one Instagram Bot vendor describes themselves:
Ugh — no thanks!
I’m not saying that Millennials can’t and shouldn’t make money off of bombarding upwilling viewers with spam attacks. I’m just saying “is that really a Story Bot?”
Don’t you mean “Hustle Bot” or “Spam Bot?”
Getting back to the term “Story” — I sure hope that Stories — as a simple data structure evolve into an open standard — so that we might exchange and share stories — between social media platforms — and 3rd party independent products.
Cause our “Storytelling Beings” LOVE to take stories — and add “interactivity” to them!
