In March 2017, oolipo launched its first set of full stories, introducing a new way to interact with stories and enabling users to create and unlock the magic of storytelling for mobile devices.
Each story is told episodically, with the episodes lasting less than 15 minutes reading time each. The stories consist of multimedia elements bound together by a strong narrative structure & design —stories developed in cooperation with authors, brands, publishers, TV-productions & the games industry.
The Literary Platform worked with the team at oolipo from early 2015 through to end 2016. Our work over that two years was wide-ranging and included:
Research:
– Competitor Review: Looking into existing services and a rigorous analysis of business models.
– Market Research: Understanding the shape of reading, writing and publishing in different territories to inform product development
– Reader Insight: Looking at a variety of different readers, e.g. existing e-book reader; online literature reader; mobile users reading on their device but not necessarily books nor self-defining as ‘reader’
– Innovation Trends: Looking at innovation trends and how they might conceivably impact on the broader publishing landscape and the proposition itself
– Writer Insight: Understanding how writing for a digitally native product platform might be approached differently – how this might affect writers’ working practises
Workshops:
As part of our work, we coordinated author workshops including one with story guru and screenwriter, Bobette Buster to look at the story mechanics writers could use to develop compelling stories.
Content commissioning:
We also helped oolipo commission a number of English-speaking projects for the platform, and developed content leads for the oolipo team in Germany, culminating in the following commissions:
– HIGH by Matt Thorne
– JELLYBONE by Kate Pullinger
– VALHALLA by Neil Bennun and Season Butler
– LONDON, I by Suli Breaks
– THE DARKNESS BEHIND OUR EYES by Karrie Fransman