Our inaugural post describes Storybird as “collaborative storytelling.” But what does that mean?

If you read the FAQ on our soon-to-be-launched service, you’d find:

Storybird is a social media service that uses collaborative storytelling to connect kids and families. Two people author a Storybird—one with words, one with pictures—and then share it with their network. The final product can be printed, watched on screen, played with like a toy, or shared through a worldwide library.

If you turned those words into pictures, it might look like this:

Storybirds are a process that works like a game, media that can live on any device, and objects that we can share among family and friends.

Early on, we were asked “why not just call them books?” Well, Storybirds aren’t always books. Sometimes they live solely on the web. And, if they ARE printed, they could just as easily be sequential postcards you mail to your aunt every week or a poster series.

Storybirds aren’t purely stories, either. Making a Storybird is often like playing a game, with two people taking turns riffing on each other’s ideas.

Really, Storybirds are a new form factor. They combine aspects of games, publishing, and social media.

When we’re in elevators and, you know, have to give an elevator pitch? We say “you read them like stories, play them like games, and send them like greeting cards.” That seems to work.

(Teenage Witch courtesy of the amazing Sebastiaan Van Doninck from Antwerp, Belgium. More on his work—and generosity—in a future post.)