Enstoria is a dead-simple way to share your favorite stories. Tried to make the UI simple. There's no set-up, no new account to create (fb or twitter login), and a pretty simple form.
Something just isn't clicking with it, and I'm too close to see why...
I didn't quite like the orange-yellow on light yellow scheme, it makes the text hard to read.
But more than that, I have the following comments:
* The purpose of the site is not obvious at first glance, are these nice jokes, stories to be inspired at work, heart warming family stories, etc. I think focusing on one or more areas and making that clear in the entry page would be useful.
* I read two stories: the Ouija bored one and the Olive Garden one. They were, how to put this delicately, weak, the sort of thing your somewhat shallow colleague blurts out at the cooler which makes you hurry back to your cube. You need to get much better content than that, because once someone reads a few bad ones and leaves, they are not every coming back.
* Everyone loves to tell stories so it shouldn't be hard to get good content. I suggest you cold call some high profile people and ask them to submit a story. A story by Godin, Huffington, O'Reilly (both) or a famous writer would be great boost.Also, talk to people on the street, e.g. go to a homeless person begging for change and tell him you'll give him $5 if he tells you a good one. I bet one in five story would be really interesting. Check your local minor celebtities, e.g. TV people, etc. Go to an assisted living house and talk to the old people. Go to the hospital and talk to people.
* Stories do not exist in vacuum, if I'm moved by a story I'd like to know more about the person who told it. You should have storyteller profiles and better pictures for perople (at least initially not profile pics). Take them yourself while interviewing.
I think you got a great idea but you need better content.
2. Content is still king, and definitely struggling with that.
3. I love your ideas for getting some content in there.
4. I really like the idea about making it about the storytellers along with the stories.
You've given me a lot to think about here. Thanks for taking the time. Anything else, please feel free to pass your thoughts along.
I don't have a facebook account or a twitter account, and I have no plans to get one. This makes me completely ineligible to participate in certain websites.
I understand that I am completely the anomaly here, but just be aware that by not providing an authentication mechanism for people without these accounts, you're patently telling them "I don't care to have your business".
I think it's an interesting concept, but without the ability to login and use it, I can't really give you any feedback. I would hope the purpose of using it is to help share and discover new works from other authors and storytellers, helping people spread their work while exposing them to new work as well. That sort of thing would be a major plus, feature-wise, in my opinion
Thanks for taking the time to check it out.
In other words, users should be able to opt-in stories into a public feed of new stories, or stories by tag/type, so that others can come along and browse by recent or tag and find new content relevant to their interests. Clearly, things should also be able to be private, and likely should be private by default.
If the service had that, and didn't require me to use Facebook/Twitter, I'd consider signing up and putting up some of my own content, as one of my biggest hurdles has always been getting what I've written in front of a wider audience of readers, for the purpose of getting a more diverse collection of critiques.
Hope you keep at it!
