2016 is full steam ahead in terms of product development at Shorthand. We have plenty in store in terms of new storytelling features, but there are two main areas of focus for us this year that I'd like to tell you about.
The first is deepening our professional services offering. The second is simplifying and broadening story distribution. You have told us what's important, and we're listening.
Many customers tell us that our main competitor is their internal development team. You can see why this would be true: interactive, multimedia stories are code-heavy and often bespoke, and so larger organisations have in-house teams to help build those stories.
But here's the interesting thing: a lot of the time the internal development team becomes an advocate for Shorthand. Why? Because they realise that they can use Shorthand to expedite the creation of even the most customized, bespoke stories. Ensuring that these kinds of stories work across most browsers and devices every time is an expensive and non-trivial exercise; but Shorthand ships with a set of storytelling features that are tried, tested and trusted by some of the largest media organisations in the world. The editors and developers at these organisations understand that Shorthand provides great value even when the story will be heavily customized at the end of story creation workflow.
However, not everyone has the luxury of an internal development team. But it's no less important for these smaller organisations that Shorthand stories look and feel like their own stories, not like everyone else's. Occasionally they also need custom storytelling elements built. In the past, we haven't always had the capacity to provide this customization. This is about to change. Shorthand is cultivating relationships with handpicked agencies who will work with us and with you to deliver the very best editorial, design and development services. If you're an existing or prospective customer who's interested in this offering, or if you're a digital agency that has what it takes to deliver top notch reading experiences, we'd love to hear from you. We're particularly keen to hear from digital agencies who might be interested in a channel partner arrangement, whereby you benefit from each Shorthand story on-sold to your clients.
At the tail end of the workflow, we're looking at ways to simplify publishing and distribution. That means better integration with your CMS or web hosting. But we also understand that your CMS or web host are not the only possible destinations for your completed stories. More and more, publishers are experimenting with other channels, like Facebook Instant, Apple News and Snapchat Discover, and we're aiming to simplify publishing to these platforms right from Shorthand.
You can rest assured that as we add more value to our professional storytelling offering, Shorthand will retain the simplicity, elegance and focus on storytelling for which it has always been known. And, of course, we'll continue to bring you innovative storytelling elements that open up new ways to tell stories. I'll have more to say about those in a future post.
That's the road ahead
So 2016 is set up to be an exciting year for our company and our customers. We're strapped in and motoring down the highway!
As always, I'd love to hear from you! Where do you see storytelling going? What would you put on our product roadmap if you had the chance?
I'm @rickyrobinson on Twitter or you can reach me by email at <my-first-name>@shorthand.com.
