Narratologists, as the name implies, obsess over narrative.  What makes a good story (and a story good)?  What are the emotional stakes?  What’s the relationship between characters?  Between text and subtext?  Who are the players?  What roles to they play, and do these roles reveal or conceal their true natures?  What motivates them?  What needs to they seek to fulfill?   How does narrative create dialogue between players and audience?  These are the questions keeping Narratologists awake at night, and earning their keep during the day.

Platformists obsess over apps. How solid is an app?  How does it scale?  What languages is it written in (and how many does it speak)?  Who uses it and why?  What is the feature set?  What is the ROI on the investment in an app?   What is the social component?  How compatible is it with other apps?   What’s the relationship between reliability and flexibility?  What differentiates it from its competitors?  If you can answer these questions for more than five apps, you’re probably a Platformist.

One can collaborate with the other, but one cannot be both.  Not at the same time anyway.  We all have to choose.  To help with your decision-making, here are a few things to consider:

Narratives are designed to make sense of the world by distilling information down to its essence.  Most apps and platforms are, by contrast, designed to make information available to as many people as quickly as possible.  One is a  a micro-brewed beer that evokes new sensations you want to share with friends.  The other is beer that evokes images of Clydesdales on television.  Take your pick.

Narrative is, by design, more unique, and therefore scarcer and ultimately more valuable than any platform or app.  As information gets commoditized across platforms–33.5 billion tweets about brands in 2009 (Forrester),  120 million videos hosted on YouTube with an average of 200,000 more added every day (Yahoo Answers), and 400+ million profiles on Facebook (Business Week)–a use of story as the Ultimate Organizing Principle grows more valuable all the time.  Would you rather wrestle with one meaningful narrative, or 33.5 billion mostly meaningless tweets?   Call it while it’s in the air.

Narrative consists of raw, unmediated interaction.  It happens human to human.  Face to face.  Platforms, on the other hand, invite mediated experiences.  The humans you’re really interacting with are the ones who designed the platform you’re using.  Narratologists focus first on the connections and conversations between people.   That’s life.  A Platformist’s foremost concern is the relationship between people and technology.  And while it’s a cleaner, less risky, and more predictable proposition, it’s also not life.  The choice is always ours to make.

Maybe what matters most over the long haul is that narratives are a lot more fun.  They generate energy and emotion, manifest purpose, offer possibilities.  They move people, and liberate them from the humdrum of daily life.  Platforms, from the days of Gutenberg’s first printing press, have always been and will always be persnickety, finicky, tricky, sticky.  They break down.  They spawn frustration and induce headeaches.  We find ourselves chained to them.  It’s the nature of the beast.  Would you rather entertain the possibility of having fun, or guarantee yourself a a certain amount of frustration?   Are you a ‘glass-is-half-full-drink-up’ kind of person, or a ‘this-glass-will-automatically-notify-me-via-SMS-when-its-fill-factor-is-above-50%’ kind of person?  You cannot be both.

Narratives define what platforms cannot.  Narratives lasts longer than platforms.   Mean more.   Engage more deeply.  Evolve more quickly.  Earn more money over time.

Choose.