Thanks to smartphones and the ability to share stuff in real-time on social networks from wherever we may be, the way we share things online has become for news coverage.

But it’s not always easy to dig through all the relevant bits and chunks of a particular event or news story that get posted across various social media sites from different people. That’s where Storify comes in to help.

What Exactly is Storify?


Storify is basically a digital curation tool that allows you to easily search for elements about any story or event you might be tracking. You can then build your own story through Storify to essentially tell the whole story better using the most relevant social media posts that you found from around the web.

Storify is a great tool for journalists and people involved in real-time reporting. It’s used by some of the biggest news sites on the web, some of which embed their Storify stories right into their web pages.

Here’s what a Storify story looks like. Scrolling through one will give you a better idea about how a story can be told almost entirely through social media posts.

Using the Storify Editor

When you press the blue “Create a Story” button in the top right corner, you’ll be taken to the Storify editor, which gives you all the tools you need to start building your story. And it’s actually pretty intuitive to use.

On the left, you’ll find the template to start building your story. You can add a headline, description, and you can even add your own text by clicking anywhere in the body.

On the right, you’ll see the media search tool. This is what you use to find relevant social media posts about your topic.

Storify allows you to search through public posts from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Google, SoundCloud and many others. Once you’ve typed in a keyword and found a relevant social media post that you’d like to use in your story, you simply drag and drop the post into the body of the template. It’s that easy.

Embedding Your Storify into a Web Page

Once you’re happy with how you’ve built your first story through Storify, you can publish it and share it using the URL given to you, or you can directly embed it into a blog or website.

At the top right corner of any Storify page, there’s a “</>” option you can click to grab the embed code so it can be pasted into any web page. The entire story is embedded, complete with clickable links and features left intact.

It’s a great option if you want to encourage more interaction from visitors into your site, and the social media elements can be a nice change every so often from the regular text-based articles.

Using Storify as a Social Network

Although Storify helps make sense from everything that gets posted on other popular social networks, it’s also kind of a social network in itself.

On the front page, you can browse through trending Storify stories and popular social media posts. As a Storify user, you can follow other users and attract a following of your own.

Just like most social networks, all stories built with Storify also have a “like” and “comment” option, which can be found next to the embed button in the top right corner. Interacting can help you attract more followers who may be interested in your stories.

Big News Sites on Storify

Real-time social media updates have basically become an invaluable resource for news reporting. Some of the big news outlets you can find using Storify include ABC News, CNN, The Washington Post, The Guardian, CBC News and several more.

You can sign up for a free account here. And while you’re at it, you may also want to check out how news breaks on Twitter.