Social network and video sharing site Your Truman Show has opened up its beta to the general public, 10 months after its initial launch, around three months later than originally anticipated.
Cheekily borrowing from the title of Paramount’s 1998 movie [has Viacom sent in the lawyers yet?], the site has cleverly positioned itself with the focused offer of being “dedicated to collecting personal stories”, simultaenously a sufficiently broad content definition to catch a huge range of consumer-generated content.
One novel feature of the navigation is the ability to filter content on a sliding scale ranging from comedy to drama, alongside the somewhat curious mood-based categories of calm to exciting.
At a time when major players in the market are aiming to make their services stickier by adding more professionally-produced content, Your Truman Show may struggle to stand out through consumer-generated tales alone. That said, the BBC’s digital storytelling initiatives Video Nation and Telling Lives continues to attract regular, if niche, audiences and has done a tremendous job in promoting media literacy among its users.
The Beyondness of Things 