Share Your Stories Using Broadcastr
A new iPhone app just launched this month that I’ve already fallen in love with. It’s called Broadcastr. I had an opportunity to talk with one of the founders, Scott…
A new iPhone app just launched this month that I've already fallen in love with. It's called Broadcastr.
I had an opportunity to talk with one of the founders, Scott Lindenbaum, while at SXSW. Here's a little of what he had to say about what the app can do:
Anybody anywhere in the world can tell a story in the best way they know how, with their own voice, and share it on an interactive map.
That means that any other user can go on that map virtually … or actually go to those locations while on a mobile, and use a feature we call Geoplay that plays back the highest-rated stories based on your physical location, like a museum tour of the world. … You're still plugged into this invisible layer of memory and storytelling and experience and history, and you can filter it however you want.
His view on how this tool can be used by writers in particular:
It allows you to extend your presence and your capabilities as a storyteller beyond the page. When people are out in the world, they can still engage with your sensibility, your style, your tone, and if they trust you as a storyteller, they may want that voice chaperoning them through the world.
And here Scott comments on implications for memoirists:
Every story happens somewhere, and the cool thing about what we're doing is that a lot of those places where things happen no longer exist. … Yet your memory of that place still exists. And so this is a way to marry memory back to place, and to have a collective consciousness mapped back onto the world in the same way it's mapped in our minds, but it's shareable.
Today I recorded my first story using Broadcastr, where I discuss the origins of the E-Media Division at the College-Conservatory of Music, where I'm a visiting professor. Click here to listen!
Broadcastr is still in beta, but it's already ranked as "New and Noteworthy" in Apple's App Store. Go check out their site and sign up.
Jane Friedman is a full-time entrepreneur (since 2014) and has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. She is the co-founder of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest. In addition to being a columnist with Publishers Weekly and a professor with The Great Courses, Jane maintains an award-winning blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com. Jane’s newest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
