Rameez Nooruddin

Cow­bird makes it easy for any­one to tell beau­ti­ful sto­ries — incor­po­rat­ing text, pho­tog­ra­phy, sound, sub­ti­tles, maps, tags, time­lines, char­ac­ters, roles, and ded­i­ca­tions — as you keep a diary of your life.

Cow­bird is also pio­neer­ing a new form of par­tic­i­pa­tory jour­nal­ism, allow­ing peo­ple all over the world to col­lab­o­rate in chron­i­cling the over­ar­ch­ing “sagas” that shape our lives today.

— Jonathan Har­ris on Cow­bird

Jonathan’s Today is one among the few photo-blogs that I fol­low reg­u­larly. One photo every day and a beau­ti­ful story to go with it. Some­thing I’ve wanted to do myself in rameeznooruddin.com/photo but never got the hang of it yet.

Jonathan’s lat­est project, Cow­bird, is sort of an anti-social-network. Shun­ning the likes of com­ments, retweets, likes, +1’s and any­thing of that sort, the spot­light is on the con­tent – your stories.

The tim­ing of Cowbird’s launch is just per­fect. There’s a grow­ing sen­ti­ment that the cur­rent “social” behe­moth has become noisy, clut­tered and focused on min­ing users’ data for adver­tis­ers’ sake. The New York Times recently ran a story about peo­ple who have quit Face­book ¹ and are happy about it. I think it is time we explored other def­i­n­i­tions of “social” on the web.

You can use Cow­bird like a jour­nal or blog with pho­tos and brief nar­ra­tives (text/audio) to go along with it. Things become more inter­est­ing when these sto­ries become a part of a big­ger event like the Occupy move­ment. The sto­ries are inter­wo­ven into beau­ti­ful col­lages called “Sagas” and the nar­ra­tive is often quite compelling.

Cow­bird is about both you as an indi­vid­ual and you as a part of the fab­ric of soci­ety. Isn’t that what social is all about?

1. I had deac­ti­vated my account a few months ago but went back sheepishly.