oolipo's vision for mobile storytelling

Ryan Mullins here. CEO and co-founder of oolipo. Pleasure to meet you.

The oolipo team recently released our new mobile storytelling app. It’s available on iOS, with an Android version cooking up as we speak. Wanted to share some ideas about why we’re doing this and the future we want to build.

oolipo is a space for the creation of original mobile series that harness the power of mobile devices. Readers will experience a our new format that embodies a holistic mobile experience using words, videos, photos, GIFs, interactivity, animations, etc. Someone recently described the experience of reading one of our stories as “The offspring of a love-affair between a Book, YouTube, and a Snapchat Story”.

Two questions drove Johannes Conrady and I to start oolipo: What if storytellers could create new mobile series using the phone’s native features and build open, interactive storyworlds? What would that look like?

We wanted to create something that sat somewhere between watching a book and reading a movie but had all the interactive components of gaming. But, again, an experience that leveraged mobile technology. Look. We are nowhere near achieving this. We just released our first attempt. But that’s the vision driving us forward.

In the past, to create a multi-media and interactive experience, storytellers and creators had to develop a single app for a single story. This is expensive and knowledge-intensive. BYT, plenty of cool examples are out there. Eli Horowitz’s The Pickle Index, for example, rocks. (Eli, if you’re reading this, holla.) Ian Pears’ Arcadia is also dope. But, not everyone has the knowledge and resources to achieve this. And, it’s expensive AF. I’m bearish on VR, bullish on AR. And, when the latter navigates toward mobile, well, I won’t be complaing (You hear that Tim?)

“We wanted to create something that sat somewhere between watching a book and reading a movie.”

The future we want is one in which content creators have a space to experiment and create new mobile masterpieces using mobile technology. Like, we want the next generation to explore all the affordances of this new prism. Where’s the Being John Malkovich or Lost in Translation for mobile? There’s got to be an art and principles to create for mobile. Here’s the space to explore that.

In this excellent read from 2015, Matt Burdette of Oculus StoryStudio refers to The Swayze Effect.
“The Swayze Effect (or just Swayze, in the adjective form) describes the sensation of having no tangible relationship with your surroundings despite feeling present in the world. Much like the experiences and struggles of Sam Wheat, the protagonist in Ghost, the 1990 hit crime-romance film starring Patrick Swayze. Basically, it’s the feeling of yelling ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ when no one or nothing else around seems to acknowledge it.”

It’s describing a push for something like a quantum narrative, one in which the reader or viewer is entangled in the experience and not just The Great Eye being present but without agency. Granted, he’s talking about VR, but there’s no reason this can’t be indexed over mobile as well. Of course, the important element here is that you avoid going Full Monty, rubbing your technology in everyone’s face. The best technology disappears, slips into the background and enables the content to shine. New and emerging technologies often get in the way. We’re not yet doing anything even remotely reaching the technological virtuosity of Oculus. At least not yet.

We want to reinvent the campfire. 🔥 Our flame is the internet. That’s what we sit around and what enables the narrative space in which we’re moving.

Johannes describes our vision this way: “We want to open up the platform for other creatives to help them develop and scale their stories native to the consumption habits of the mobile user. The goal is to have a new marketplace for this new kind of story.”

Most importantly, on oolipo, our creators actually charge for their work. Like, they can make money from their work. Remember that? We want people actually to pay for their stuff. oolipo users can purchase credits with which they can purchase their favorite stories and support creators.

So, we’re at the beginning stages. We just released our first batch of oolipo originals. And, we’ve got more to come this year.
oolipo is storytelling for the stories that haven’t been told, yet. Using a medium that hasn’t been fully explored, yet. Yet has come to an end.