Diigo Group on Web 2.0 Tools moderated by Helen Baxter, Producer of the g33k show is a constant weekly source of insight into how and at what pace the web is really developing. I have been able to become a BETA tester in all sorts of new and wonderful Web 2.0 apps ranging from one of the most wonderful new music downloading programmes that was shut down two weeks after it launched obviously because of its extraordinary ability to find every obscure and known music track on the Web within 30 seconds to the launch of Googles new plug-in for for the Office suite. For me though the most fascinating new web 2.0 tool has been Storify - an on-line application that "makes stories from the social Web, finding moments to remember in the real-time stream".
It works by sucking content into its platform through tagging - not uncommon. What is unique though is that it sucks in content from across all the major social media content platforms ie You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, SlideShare, Google in real time and what a social media author/editor is able to to do is aggregate around a theme or question from all these sources and add text of the authors choosing. What is exciting is the emergence of a new form of narrative - one in which the author can juxtapose knowledgable academic lectures from You Tube siting various views on a theme against equally meaningful statements around the same theme using 140 character comments from Twitter.
You can find a couple of stories I have written recently The Meaning of Money, Design Thinking - What Is It Really, The Story of Storytelling
Here is the Toronto Star's Storify aggregation of media content on the situation in Libya.
The potential of Storify lies in its ability not only to be able to aggregate content but to enable research around complex topics to be done in real time using all forms of media whilst the author as audience becomes the commentator as well.
This is a breakthrough!
Watch this space as it seems to me at least to show the potentiality of how information can be harnessed creatively through tagging and condensed into meaningful social media narrative - a new creative form.