Tokoni Takes Storytelling in New Direction
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Tokoni came out of a year-long beta in October 2008, and favorably impressed a number of reviewers with its approach. An interesting hybrid of social networking, blogging, and community, the site has been compared to Gather and Associated Content. It's a place for telling stories...so what story does it have to tell?
Tokoni is backed by former eBay executive Mary Lou Song and former Skype president Alex Kazim, who serves as the company's CEO. Indeed, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and eBay itself made investments in the hybrid web community. Why would employees of an auction site, and even the site itself, be interested in this kind of business? To hear Kazim tell it, it comes down to glass ducks.
There is a story behind the glass ducks, of course – of a special gift given to a daughter, of losing everything in a fire, of seeing the exact same type of ducks again on eBay selling for a little too much money, of a deal worked out with the seller to buy one duck at a time – and then getting the ducks in the mail all at once, because those in the community who heard the story were so touched that they bought the ducks for the community member. Kazim and others realized that eBay, by the nature of its market, is full of such stories, but it isn't the best place for them.
Enter Tokoni. This web site bills itself as a place for users to tell their stories, be they about family, fashion, health, hobbies, education, worthy causes, pets, relationships, science and technology, and so forth. Users can sign up and tell their stories, much as they would with a blog. So how exactly is Tokoni different from a blogging site? Who are they trying to reach?
HyveUp noted back in October that, although 900,000 blog posts are made every 24 hours, 60 to 80 percent of blogs are abandoned within a month. Tokoni, then supports the once-a-month blogger; someone with a story to tell, but without the time to spend on writing significant entries at the rate required to keep a full-fledged blog alive. Other reviewers have noted that Tokoni provides a very easy interface, friendly even to Luddites. Let's take a look and see what they have to offer.
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