StoryFire

Prior to co-founding the company, Ridgway (known on YouTube as McJuggerNuggets) was a content creator on the site, who created his YouTube channel in 2006. He gained notoriety for the Psycho Series, a four-year-long series of videos documenting a fictional, dysfunctional version of his family. According to Ridgway, StoryFire was prompted by dissatisfaction with YouTube's "corporate interests".[1]

Brian Spitz, born in San Francisco prior to being the alleged majority stake owner of the StoryFire business, and founder, was a director and actor, having credited roles for motion pictures such as: “The Rocket (2008), Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005), Psycho Family (2017)”. Spitz had been appearing in co-founder Jesse Ridgway's YouTube videos since April 2016.[3]

In November 2016, Brian Spitz allegedly sent Jesse Ridgway an email, introducing the scheme of StoryFire. They concluded to, Ridgway being the lead financier and Spitz being the lead software engineer. StoryFire was publicly announced by Ridgway himself on April 10, 2017 through his personal Twitter profile, and launched on July 10, of that year. [4]

On January 24, 2021, Ridgway announced on Twitter that the platform would be shutting down on February 1, 2021.[5] He cited a lack of funding and lack of support as reasons for his decision to shut the platform down. In a related YouTube video uploaded to his primary channel the same day, Ridgway claimed that despite putting millions of dollars of his own money into StoryFire, Spitz never gave up a fair value of equity in return. He also alleged that Spitz had siphoned funds intended for StoryFire and used them for himself without Ridgway's knowledge, which created an irreparable rift between them.[4]

On StoryFire's initial shutdown date, Ridgeway announced that the platform would continue due to him allegedly putting in enough of his own money to last for another year. However, with Ridgway’s past of portraying scripted videos as real, many of his fans believe that StoryFire was never in danger of shutting down, rather that the videos were either a publicity stunt for the platform and/or another one of his narratives. Ridgway also deleted the shutdown announcement video shortly after. He later addressed aforementioned concerns on Feburary 5, 2021.

StoryFire features a "likes" system and comment section similar to Twitter's feed and follower-gaining similar to YouTube. The site also uses an in-app currency called "Blaze" that is earned by watching ads on the platform which can be then used to tip creators, including the tweets.[1] Blaze can also be used to facilitate teasers and partial paywalls, such as offering one chapter of a "story" for free and charging 10 Blaze for access to each follow-up chapter.[1]

StoryFire relies on a business model of pre-approving videos before they are posted, typically requiring trailers or text describing content down to minutes. Advertisers enable running ads on "edgier" content while content that is "[overtly] sexual, offensive, or violent" is outright rejected by StoryFire.[1]

To gain permission to upload videos on StoryFire (as of October 2020), users first be approved by StoryFire staff.[6]

Notable users include KidBehindACamera,[1] Boogie2988,[1] and LeafyIsHere, who announced plans to use the site after being banned by YouTube.[7]

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