Features
What makes Fold different?
I see FOLD as the Ikea of the publishing platforms: It gives you the small pieces of information that you need to build your own object of knowledge. Oh, and as in Ikea, FOLD’s design is beautiful.
FOLD is one of the closest approaches I’ve known to a non-linear narrative. Even though it uses words as a nucleus, the design of the platform and the interactivity with the contextual cards allow a new approach to the text. As Matt Carroll said in a recent article about FOLD: “It’s a really clever idea that lets you add context on the side without impacting the flow of the story.”
How is it being used?
In less than a year, FOLD has become a place of amazing explainers, from complex topics as Molecular Biotechnology or Reaction-Diffusion systems, to lessons that we can learn from Zombies or alternatives to solve Inequality.
The platform is used by students, scholars, journalists and scientists who are willing to share their knowledge with a general public. “Things that tell you how to do something, or how to understand something, that’s the type of content people is using the platform for”, says Alexis Hope, “We’re really trying to create a network of explainers.”
Inspirations
I asked Alexis Hope about the referents of FOLD, she mentioned some of them:
Vox
Wikipedia
Rap Genius
Storify
Medium
Challenges
FOLD and the Future of News
In this moment FOLD is a great tool for journalists and storytellers who want to add a layer of multimedia context to their work: It makes things easier to understand, and is easy to use. But in this section I want to suggest another possibility of FOLD.
I like the metaphor behind the platform’s name. When you’re using a desktop browser to read a story on FOLD, you can see a content map in the lower right corner of the screen. That map looks just like an unfolded polyhedron, like an origami piece ready to assemble: you just have to organize the cards, fold them, and then you will have a unique body of knowledge, a three-dimensional idea, something that you couldn’t imagine with the alphabet and the printing press.
Continuing with the metaphor, you could adapt the unfolded ‘3D ideas’ (that is, the stories that we can publish in the current platform) to VR technologies. Every modular card would become a face of a three dimensional ‘body of information’ with which other users could interact.
FOLD’s concept opens new ways of imagining news and stories, and the story of the platform is just beginning.
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