It’s been 30 days since we took flight so we thought we’d share some numbers and observations with you.
In no particular order:
Traffic: We’re happy with, but a bit shocked by, the numbers. We expected about a third of the unique visitors and member signups, and we did not anticipate anything close to the impressions. The pages/visit and time/visit are strong. Plus, they both increased the longer someone was a member. We saw that in the data, but also the emails, comments, and tweets we received. Overall, traffic was impressive and healthy, particularly since this is organic growth. We’re not buying traffic and made one tweet to kick-off release v0.1.
Storybirds: About 13,000 Storybirds are “in play,” a number you can cut in half for misfires, experiments, and tire-kickers. Of the roughly 6,000 remaining, a good chunk were people who started but haven’t finished their story or collaborated with other authors. (Interestingly, only a handful of people sent collaborator invites (about 500), and of those, only half were activated. Side-by-side collaboration was the largest use-case.) Of the 1,300 Storybirds that were published, two-thirds were shared publicly and the remaining third were kept private. Like our traffic, these numbers both surprise and impress us. If you model them over a year with average growth projections, we could easily publish 25,000-35,000 stories in 2010.
Quality: Storybirds are like most social media. That is to say: about 90% of what is created is mostly of interest to the people who created it and the people they share it with. The remaining 10%, however, can be considered commercially viable given its broad appeal and quality. In the context of members, this is generally irrelevant since most people use Storybird to connect, learn, or generally goof around. They’re not looking to be “published” in the way we used to understand publishing. But on an industry level this is intriguing. If we publish 30,000 stories next year and 1-3% of them rate as commercially relevant—then Storybird immediately joins the ranks of global youth publishers in title volume.
Artists: We released Storybird v0.1 with five artist shops and are now up to 13, each with a distinct voice and style. There are roughly 800 images among them with some shops offering upward of 100 images and the smallest squeaking in at our minimum of 15 images. (When we introduce “Sets” in a later release, we expect some shops to grow to 200-300 images over the course of a year.) Generally, we’ve confirmed our suspicion that an artist needs about 40 images to get traction; any less and they dip down the usage curve. And not surprisingly, style drove narrative usage. Paul McDougall’s playful creatures attracted kids and generated cute stories. Paola Zakimi’s literary style attracted more adults and nuanced work.
Teachers: Teachers rock. Specifically, Australian teachers. From 00:00:00:01 seconds after our release, they tweeted and blogged our little budgie into 120 countries. Thirty days later, schools/teachers/students have become our growth engine, cheerleader, and constant source of amusement and surprise. Teachers used Storybird from K-12 for grammar lessons, writing techniques, experimentation—everything. Even better, activities in the classroom spilled into the home and created a bridge for parents and kids to discuss ideas and lessons together.
Families: The emails, phone calls, tweets, and blog posts we received confirmed our hope that families have embraced Storybird and are making it part of their weekly routines. Interestingly, while we expected the service to skew towards the females in the clan, fathers and boys have been heavy users, both in terms of creating and reading stories. Several dads wrote us explaining that Storybird was one of the few things they could do with their kids that wasn’t tv or videogames.
Features: The single most requested feature (after printing) was embeds. Teacher and group accounts came next, followed by search and some form of following/favorites. All of these are in the pipeline.
Languages: Over 90% of Storybird’s usage was from English speaking countries like the U.S, U.K, Australia, Canada, etc. The remaining 10% was divided among Portuguese, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Swedish. In total, we saw roughly 25 languages cross our path, causing us to rethink our support/moderation plan for non-English members as we scale. This hit home when we couldn’t accept into the public library a brilliant number/reader book since it was authored in English and Romanian (if we can’t moderate a language, we can’t accept it in the public library).
Usage: The most fascinating and rewarding part of the last month was, of course, the stories. Storybird is like the cauldron Mickey Mouse stirs into a frenzy in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a murky magic of experimentation, imagination, technology, and aesthetics. It has produced stories that confirm our endless imagination, desire to belong, annoyance with life’s injustices, and hope for love. For this fledgling community, it is a small feast.
After the jump: some of the favorites that bubbled up from the pot.
Everyone’s favorites
ust when it seems that digital typography has settled into a sort of humdrum routine rooted in technical limitations, along comes the ‘
