“Cowbird is a public library of human experience, offering a simple set of storytelling tools — for free, and without ads. 72,274 authors from 185 countries have told 89,402 stories on 28,228 topics. We invite you to join us and contribute your stories.” (Cowbird Website, About Cowbird, http://cowbird.com/about/)
If I’m correct, at first glance, the site acts as a wider community where anyone around the world can share their stories. By using the ‘search’ bar, you can type any key word that interests you and be taken to a story that is relevant. Cowbird houses stories that have been ‘tagged’ or ‘categorised’, allowing for people to connect with each other’s stories. This is very similar to the way in which I use tagging in my blog posts, in order to connect with both my own and other people’s blog posts.
Cowbird reminds me of the site FMyLife or in other words, FML, that I used to visit when I was a little younger. It’s a site where you can read daily ‘FML’ moments but also submit an FML moment; if you have one. The site creates a community of people who seem to have unfortunate things happen to them, leaving readers around the world with either a light of glimmer that their lives aren’t so bad or a “omg this happened to me once too”.
Screenshot taken on Tuesday April 19th 2016, Cowbird Homepage.
I am very interested in the way in which these sites create a sense of Community, despite the fact we all live in different places and will update you all if I find more sites just like Cowbird.
