5 Features I Hope Vocal Adds

I have no right to be writing this so soon but, I am an all or nothing person and I feel like I have too. I have been a proud member of Vocal since February18th, 2021. That means I have a whooping 16 days of experience. That’s 25,920 minutes of membership. In that time I have come up with five different features that I wish Vocal would add to the platform. I know, it's a little soon to already be judging the platform, but hey life is short; why wait?

First up, I would like the ability to follow other writers. I have found a few writers on the platform who’s writing I enjoy and I would like to be able to follow them. This way, I would be able to know when they post and can read, like, or share, their stories to support them. Not that it is overly complicated to do it now, I just think it would be beneficial to skip a step. Also, the writers might appreciate seeing the following they have gathered on the platform.

Secondly, I would like to recommend a new community; fictional short stories. Recently, there was a challenge to write a short story about a little black book. Once I had finished writing my submission, I was unsure as to how to categorize it. All of the communities are very specific and I just couldn’t figure out where the right category was. Personally, I enjoy writing fiction more than anything else. I would feel more at home if Vocal had a category dedicated to fiction.

Next, I would love the ability to categorize my published stories on my profile. I have tried my best to write to each category, broadening my horizons, but I feel like it makes my profile look unorganized and scattered. If profiles could be grouped in this way it might help readers find articles that they are interested in but with the voice of the authors they enjoy.

I wish Vocal had a list of the stories that I’ve liked. I am the kind of person that likes to go back to stories numerous times but it can be hard to remember the names of each work. If I had a way of keeping track of the posts I’ve enjoyed I would be able to find them easier. This would help the writers as well because it would bring users back to their stories or profiles for additional viewing.

Lastly, I would like to suggest a community for questions and answers. There is not currently a way to have an open conversation with other users on the platform. I am actually very happy that people can not comment on stories, since it isn’t always a nice comment, but I would like to be able to connect to others. A questions and answer community might offer that. For example, someone might post a question about where they should travel to next. They can ask questions about places, prices, experiences, ect. and then others can respond. The original writer of the post can choose the best answer and post that as an attachment of continuation of the question. Just an idea.

I know it is a bit presumptuous to already be making suggestions, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. I am very excited to have found this platform and am ecstatic about the rapid growth that it is seemingly experiencing. Hopefully, the suggestions are well received, fingers crossed, and maybe one or two come about. I know I would love it and I hopefully other users would like it as well.