We all know our reading habits have changed drastically in the past decade, particularly for the younger generation. This change is mainly due to the new ways in which we consume content; every day more and more people are reading their daily newspapers, magazines, and novels on their mobiles, tablets or Kindles.
App developers are constantly looking for innovative ways to use these technologies and in recent months there has been a growth in popularity for many ‘chat fiction‘ apps. Never heard of them? Don’t worry, Snackson is here to explain!
Chat fiction apps aim to present novels in an alternative format, mainly as text messages. The idea is that users have to scroll down the screen to find out what will happen next in the story. Simple, right? This new reading format has proved to be very appealing, particularly for younger readers who are used to scrolling through images and information on other applications such as Instagram or Whatsapp.
Welcome microlearning’s little brother… microreading!
In this post we will present a couple of the most popular chat fiction apps:
Hooked
The first app of its kind, Hooked was envisioned by the current CEO Prerna Gupta whilst traveling the world in pursuit of her dream of writing a sci-fi fantasy trilogy. Seeing a massive opportunity in the business of storytelling, Gupta started by carrying out pilot tests which presented text message conversations between the characters of a story. This format proved to be a success, and best of all, readers only needed to spend 5 minutes at a time reading each part (did someone say microlearning?). As the app developed, social features were also added, together with the option for users to create their own stories.
Yarn
The content on Yard is also presented in the SMS-like format, but the content is original as the platform allows writers and developers to publish their own stories. These stories are meant to be interactive so users can help characters make important decisions and solve puzzles along the way.
Are you curious about to find out more about these apps?
This video shows the first part of one of the most popular stories on Hooked, prepare to be spooked…
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