StoryCorps.Me Partners With Google To Share Small Business Stories on YouTube
If you stop and think about it, everyone has at least a short story to tell. It doesn’t matter whether that story includes themselves or someone else, or if the story happened yesterday or a long time ago, there are always some new things you can learn from people who have really been there, and done that. Telling good stories is one of the aims of Google Small Business Week, so the guys from Google teamed up with Storycorps.Me to bring us a selection of great stories from the world of small businesses, that you can watch on the official YouTube playlist.
StoryCorps.Me is a project we’re always glad to feature as we already have on the .ME blog, as it’s one of the sites that actively pursues the idea of making the world a better place since its inception in 2002. The main idea behind the site is that it allows for people to record interviews with their friends, family or acquaintances about topics they choose. It all gets recorded and stored in a database of voices, something StoryCorps is known for. Their database is actually the largest collection of human voices ever recorded, so that’s surely something to brag about. There are a number of ways for people to record interviews, ranging from a specially designed booth to a smartphone app.
Google is, well, Google.
Small Business = The Best Business
The premise is simple: both Google and StoryCorps team up to find some of the most interesting stories from the world of small business and share them in the form of short videos. This comes as a sort of celebratory deal considering that Google and StoryCorps are helping celebrate National Small Business Week, and both companies are here to help present the wonderful people that actively drive innovation and business forward in their small business ventures and establishments. This provides us with a video series that showcases some of the best stories from small business owners, such as Herman Heyn, whose fascination with astronomy led him to become a street corner astronomer. He has managed to make his dreams a reality, and to inspire others to look at the stars and cherish them in a way he does.
You can hear the rest of the story on YouTube. It’s really quite an interesting story, don’t you think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDgs9jtJl7M
Small businesses are known to be the real driving force behind every economy. Of course, large companies and corporations do have more money and resources, but it’s the small businesses that have survived even the hardest of times and found ways to help their communities.
Even though there’s never been such a large orientation towards “giving back to the community” from the big companies, there’s still a lot of things that need to be improved there, and these are the things small businesses know best. It doesn’t matter if that’s your local grocery store or a custom bicycle builder, they all have great stories to tell for sure, and they all are a part of the community as much as you are. Unfortunately, small businesses have seen better days in some countries, and many got hit hard by the recession, but they carry on.
A Business With A Soul
This isn’t the first time that Google and StoryCorps joined forces to create something great. Last year, they created The Great Thanksgiving Listen, a campaign that encouraged people to have an interview with their elders during the holidays, and record it so it will be remembered forever in the StoryCorps database. The campaign proved to be a success, and Google even featured a link to StoryCorps on the Google homepage, something that we don’t see very often.
Stories like these are really all around us. To be honest, it doesn’t take an app or an initiative for you to go out and speak with your relatives, but it’s amazing that both Google and StoryCorps found a way to connect generations through a medium that is the small business, a staple of the community. Through featuring small business stories, they have shown us that this form of business is one of the most soulful types of business there is and that we should always be proud of the people in our community, regardless of what they do.
For more stories, visit StoryCorps.Me, and for the stories check out this YouTube playlist!
