Tokoni, a Source of Life Testimonials – E5

Interview with Alex Kazim, co-founder and CEO of Tokoni. Part 5, life testimonials.

Tokoni is the perfect place to easily share your most profound stories. With good content and a vibrant community, Tokoni is also a nest for professional writers. Matt Katz, who “documents the life of an engaged male in modern America”, shares stories on Tokoni.

Tokoni makes a lot of sense for professional writers. As a blogger, you are not only in charge of creating your content, but you also need to distribute it: SEO, social networks, buzz, RSS marketing, offline PR… That’s not a life for a writer! Tokoni embeds your story within your audience. The social experience is designed to let others find you. Just write and see what happens.

Having journalists sourcing bits of news, most probably testimonials, from the story-hosting platform is something that Alex Kazim thinks about. Since the Founders are eBay vets, I wonder if Tokoni has considered building an auction system as means for users to monetize their stories. Not that any given story is intrinsically selling material, but news-related content tends to easily bubble up on the Web, and citizen journalism is a growing trend.

Tokoni just launched publicly and needs to grow its userbase to see how things are shaping. Since Tokoni is very much like a Flickr for stories, it stands its chance in the crowded space of social networks. The concept is rather new (Associated Content is somewhat similar), the design is certainly not a headache, but the browsing experience could use a little fine-tuning (search results pages mainly show thumbnails – mainly text would be easier to grasp the story behind an item).

Overall, if you have a crazy traveling story to tell, an unusual banking problem, family issues, immigration worries, you name it, try Tokoni and see where it takes you. Your story might come across more eyeballs than you would have expected.

Read more:
Introducing Tokoni, a Social Network for Self-Expression – E1
Tokoni, Where Stories Connect – E2
Tokoni Gives a Voice to WomenCount – E3
Tokoni’s Origins: Ducks at eBay – E4