Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 6: The Tools Universe. Real-Time News Curation: Part 6 - The Tools and Technologies In this part of the guide you will find: 1. A Brief History of News Curation Tools 2. The 15 Basic Traits of a News / Content Curation System 3. 4. 5. "I've spent a good deal of time searching for a word other than "Curation" in part because of the connection to museums (which I feared sounded elitist and historic). 1) A Brief History of News Curation Tools The first news curation tools that I am aware of came out in late 2004 - early 2005, reflecting from the very beginning a growing need for both small publishers as well as for medium and large content publishers to be able to aggregate, filter and manually re-order and select the specific content items to be published in a news channel.
MySyndicaat, whose parent company, Kipcast has now grown into a multi-faceted service providing advanced news aggregation and republishing widgets for online brands and media companies, has been the true pioneer of this space. B. filter and 1. 2. Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 4: Process, Key Tasks, Workflow. I have received a lot of emails from readers asking to illustrate more clearly what the actual typical tasks of a news curator are, and what are the tools that someone would need to use to carry them out. In Part 4 and 5 of this guide I am looking specifically at both the workflow, the tasks involved as well as at the attributes, qualities and skills that a newsmaster, or real-time news curator should have. 1.
Identify NicheIdentify your specific topic-theme. The more specific, the better. The broader your coverage the less relevant it will be to your readers, unless you are already a very popular individual that people trust on a number od different topics. Sequence your selected news stories to provide the most valuable information reading experience to your readers. There are likely more tasks and elements to the news curator workflow that I have been able to identify right here. Please feel free to suggest in the comment area, what you think should be added to this set of tasks. The Birth Of The NewsMaster: The Network Starts To Organize Itself. What Is The Discovery? The discovery is the unlimited and yet untapped power we now have to search, filter, aggregate and create focussed news/information channels with the only support of our know-how, culture, experience and a little unknown free technology called: RSS.
Where Is The Real Value? The real value is in the fact that the effective widespread application of this filtering and redistribution process would be a highly valuable social endeavour and one that not only can enrich our rapidly evolving global culture but one which can also give sustainability to those who have the will and skill to ride it. Summary: Critical Issues/ Problems At Hand Too much information coming in Too many sources too scan General categorization of sources too limited.
The Filtering Mechanisms Available To Us As Stephen Downes mentions in his beautiful post about networks in his last issue of OL Daily, the network of information needs to organize itself automatically, and we must help it in doing so. 1. Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 3: Types And Real-World Examples. Part III: Curation Types and Real-World Examples There exists many types of curation, and many ways to interpret what curation really is. As I have attempted to illustrate in Part II of this guide, in my own view, aggregation is automated and it is not the same as curation.
As I wrote, "aggregation is automated, curation is manual". This does not mean that curation does not need or can do altogether away of any form of automated aggregation or social-based filtering. That is, curation for me, is by definition human-based. 1. 2. 3. 4. But I also do recognize I am venturing in some uncharted new grounds and I am therefore open to question and evaluate my own above viewpoints also from other perspectives. "I believe that there is a role for trusted curators of news, people who have unique access or unique insight, who can get to news more quickly than anybody else, or dive into it more deeply.
Types of Curation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1) Curated News Summaries and Lists of Links FeedMyApp Wikio. Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 2: Aggregation Is Not Curation. We are no longer just consumers of content, we have become curators of it too. In Part 1 of this Guide I have introduced why we really need real-time news curation and what is the basic idea behind it (Part 1 - Real-Time News Curation, Newsmastering And Newsradars - The Complete Guide Part 1: Why We Need It). In Part 2 I want to continue illustrating what "real-time news curation" is all about, and more specifically why it differs from automatic aggregation, and why you really need a human being to do it. As I see it: "Aggregation is automated, curation is manual. " Photo credit: Creativaimage Back in 2004, I wrote an article entitled: The Birth of The Newsmaster. It was my first public realization, that a real-time news curator, which I labeled at the time a "newsmaster", was soon due.
It is in the DNA of RSS to be wanting to be free, to be further reused, personalized and syndicated. The problem of information overload is like any other problem, one side of a new, bright opportunity. No. Real-Time News Curation: NewsMastering and NewsRadars. Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 7: Business Applications And Trends. Real-Time News Curation: Part 7 - Business Opportunities 1. Where Is The Money 2. Key Business Drivers 3. 4. 5. 1) Where Is The Money?
"So here's a prediction. News channels in the near future will have no reason, incentive or advantage in trying to replicate what they do now: giving coverage to a handful of topics and stories out of the whole spectrum of news out there. The very goal of trying to satisfy the greatest number of readers while keeping an often undisclosed political and business agenda will give enormous competitive advantage to new independent content sources which have built their following on deep trust, full disclosure and opinionated dedication to a very specific topic, issue.
As demand for quality, topic-specific news and information becomes the real of every individual and not just of those operating in the stock market, a universe of opportunities for monetizing high-quality and high-value topic-specific information will likely appear. 4) Business Applications: The News. Real-Time News Curation, Newsmastering And Newsradars - The Complete Guide Part 1: Why We Need It.
The time it takes to follow and go through multiple web sites and blogs takes tangible time, and since most sources publish or give coverage to more than one topic, one gets to browse and scan through lots of useless content just for the sake of finding what is relevant to his specific interest. Even in the case of power-users utilizing RSS feed readers, aggregators and filters, the amount of junk we have to sift through daily is nothing but impressive, so much so, that those who have enough time and skills to pick the gems from that ocean of tweets, social media posts and blog posts, enjoy a fast increasing reputation and visibility online.
Photo credit: dsharpie and franckreporter mashed up by Robin Good "What we need to get much better at is scaling that system so you don't have to pay attention to everything, but you don't miss the stuff you care about... "Ev Williams at a Girls in Tech event at Kicklabsvia Stowe Boyd's blog The Problem That is the the essence. Is that sustainable? Why? Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 5: The Curator Attributes And Skills. What skills do I need to have if I want to be an effective real-time news curator? Can I just pick the best headlines and links on my topic of interest or do I need to do know / do more? What makes a great news curator stand out from those who do automatic aggregation or from bloggers who create simple news stories lists? Photo credit: thesuperph In the previous parts of this Guide to Real-Time News Curation I have looked at what are the key problems giving way to the emergence of real-time news curation, at the differences between automatic aggregation and filtering and human-powered manual curation.
In Part 4 I have gone through the newsmaster workflow, the tasks and specific responsibilities and in Part 5, I am covering the key attributes, qualities and skills a successful real-time news curator must have. Here is what I have discovered: Key Attributes - Qualities of a Real-Time News Curator 1) Subject Matter Expertise Source Familiarity - Good connections network 2) Relevance 3) Trust. Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 6: The Tools Universe.