Take that, Storify! Here’s WordPress’ new tool to create social stories

WordPress has just revealed Media Explorer, a new way to embed social stuff like tweets and YouTube videos in your blog posts.

It’s a more elegant and integrated version of Storify custom-built for WordPress blogs — and that’s an awful lot of blogs. Currently, around 19 percent of the entire Internet is powered by WordPress, with monthly pageviews hovering around four billion.

With Media Explorer, you can search for and embed social media based on a serviceable number of criteria — where the tweet was posted, who uploaded the YouTube video, etc.

Here’s what it all looks like:

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  Media Explorer
  The Media Explorer can be found right inside your WordPress dashboard.

  
  Source: WordPress

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  Media Explorer Tweets
  Here’s an example of content from Twitter from the Media Explorer.

  
  Source: WordPress

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  Media Explorer YouTube
  Media Explorer in WordPress lets you search for and embed YouTube videos, no URLs or code required.

  
  Source: WordPress

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A WordPress rep confirms the tool is immediately available for WordPress.com and WordPress.com VIP users. It will be available in the near future for self-hosted WordPress blogs through Jetpack.

With this launch, WordPress shows once again that it’s a full-fledged platform, making companies like Storify look like single-feature apps by comparison.

For its part, Storify is going deep rather than wide with new products like Storify Business, a pro tool for professional storytellers, community managers, and corporate communications folks.

WordPress.com is run by Automattic, which was founded in 2005 and is based in San Francisco. To date, the company has raised $30.6 million in venture capital.

Article source: http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/28/take-that-storify-heres-wordpress-new-tool-to-create-social-stories/