A place Medium writers should be sharing their articles
I like the idea of Lincoln W Daniel’s ManyStories and how it works, but there are a lot of ways it could be improved.
What is ManyStories?
ManyStories is a part of a network of sites called Penname. ManyStories is still in its beta phase, but it allows users to share links to their articles for other people to discover. Users can follow each other, like stories or add them to collections. ManyStories also features many articles on its front page each day.
What I like
ManyStories is very simple to use. Once you’re approved to share stories after being placed on a waitlist, it’s very simple to share stories. Finding and connecting to other users is also easy. When a Medium article is shared, ManyStories is able to display Medium stories on the site, so they look fine as they’re exactly what you see on Medium. Though I think I’ve also seen articles from other sites, Quora answers aren’t allowed.
What could be improved
The site is relatively small, and it is still in its beta phase, so there are certainly many things which could be improved. One thing that stands out is when reading a Medium story, the ManyStories page that displays the full article isn’t functional to allow interaction with the Medium story.
The ManyStories native options to like, collect or share a story work fine, though they are off to the side and pretty small, but I always have to navigate to the article on Medium to clap, respond or follow the author.
Sharing articles is simple but lacks some features that could help with the process. The ability to edit the display headline and description for what displays on ManyStories would be great, along with choosing the teaser image. A featured image that looks great on Medium doesn’t always translate well to ManyStories, so being able to upload a different image to be featured on the ManyStories share would be ideal.
The description for Medium articles shared on ManyStories comes from the SEO description. Many people don’t edit that, so it’s often too long because Medium just pulls the first part of the article by default. Even when they are edited, sometimes they get cut off when displaying on ManyStories, so being able to edit a description specifically for ManyStories would be a great feature.
ManyStories also doesn’t seem to allow users to edit the tags of their shares after they are posted, which pop up at the bottom of the page and can be easy to miss when first sharing. Allowing users to edit and delete their shares would be great to allow users to tune them for the best appearance.
Another feature that could be useful is a stats page which can display total ManyStories views and likes for each user.
As mentioned before, ManyStories is able to display Medium articles on its site, and most of the articles shared seem to be from Medium; I’m not sure what other sites are allowed other than Quora answers not being allowed.
I’ve seen some other sites which have been shared on Manystories, and some of them are displayed on the site like Medium while others aren’t. It would be awesome to be able to share Quora answers in particular.
Perhaps the largest issue I have with ManyStories at the moment is the lack of any official documentation or rules
As I mentioned already, Quora answers aren’t supposed to be shared to ManyStories, but there’s no place that tells users that, or what sites can or can’t be shared. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of stories one can share a day, though it is recommended to not share too many. There’s no guide for what the rules are, so users have to figure it out for themselves how to navigate the site.
Conclusion
ManyStories is a great idea and is off to a good start. It is a great place to promote content as it does noticeably give articles some more views. I recommend it to Medium users, and I look forward to seeing new updates to the site.
Originally published on Quora. Follow me on ManyStories
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