The Future of Media: Storify and the Curatorial Instinct. The Curation Economy And The Three Cs Of Information Commerce. Several years ago I had the privilege of working with Steve Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation. Back then Steve was already vested in the future of online curation and his grande conquête was playing out with Magnify.net, a realtime video curation network. At the time, he was also a staple at some of the tech industry's most renown conferences sharing his vision for social, video, and curated content. As Steve was completing his new book, he asked if I would write the foreword. At the time I was finalizing the new version of Engage! And as a result, I couldn't make his deadline. But nonetheless, I was inspired to write an honorary foreword that I've held onto to celebrate the official release of Steve's new book.
I share this digital foreword with you here… The Curation Economy and The 3C's of Information Commerce I always appreciate when a very complex and important subject is simplified to ease understanding. Creating original content, consistently over time, is daunting. The Age of Curation: Video Q&As with Ian Katz, Matt Williams and Steve Rosenbaum at SXSW 2011. SXSW is a massive gathering of the world’s content creators, the folks who craft and market the media we consume on and offline each day. But with all this content, someone has to sort the wheat from the chaff. We spoke to The Guardian’s Ian Katz, Digg’s Matt Williams and author Steve Rosenbaum about the emerging art of content curation.
Ian Katz, the deputy editor of British newspaper of record the Guardian, says his boss hates the word “curation.” Whenever someone uses the art-y term in the context of editorial content, Katz explained, they seem to feel the need to surround it with finger quotes. But whether you want to call it aggregating, curating, or simply old-fashioned editing, how we sift through the ever-growing digital trove of professionally produced and user-generated content seemed to be on everyone’s mind at this year’s SXSW. After the session, I asked Katz to expand on the role curation plays in the new journalistic age: Related. Our lives are digital curation tools. As our lives become increasingly digital curation tools can provide a good way to document our activities, capturing a snapshot of key events and moments.
For example, the South by South West Interactive conference that took place in Austin, Texas attracted a lot of people, sharing lots of ideas, conversations, product launches, and more. Take at look at MobyNow’s real-time aggregation of all the social media at SXSW and you’ll see what I mean, the masses of tweets, photos, etc. And that’s what aggregation is good at — finding everything that’s relevant or related is easy. But aggregation isn’t that great at documenting a unique experience of an event such as SXSW in digital form. That’s where curation steps in, it can make sense of a mass of information in a useable format. Curation can help to create a specific snapshot. For example: In the future, kids might ask “What did grandpa do at SXSW in 2011?” But this form of aggregation, like all aggregation, can only go so far. Is Curation The Future of The Social Web?Scoop.
Last Monday Scoop.it was invited by pariSoma to partake in a panel discussing: “is curation the future of the Social Web?” With Burt Herman from Storify and Chris McCann from StartupDigest, Guillaume Decugis our CEO, discussed the new social behavior that curation represents online. The debate was moderated by Ben Parr, Mashable’s editor-at-large. The first question from Ben Parr was legitimate. ”What’s the hell is curation?” Of course, we feel that curation has become quite a hot topic in recent months, especially with amount of information on almost any particular topic seems to keep growing exponentially. The debate around the need of filters, and how to be sure to find the “right” information theorized by authors such as Clay Shirky or Eli Pariser collide with the need to know what you share with who to make the web social again according to social media specialist such as Brian Solis.
But the term represents a new activity online that needs to be defined. Curation – Is There an Alchemy? – MyTweetMag Blog. When Data Disappears. Understanding social media curators. Why Content Curation Should Be at the Heart of Every Social Experience. Vincent Teo | July 27, 2011 | 2 Comments | inShare0 Consider these two ways that content curation can facilitate brands to engage with consumers. Web 2.0 ushered in a new world of social media and web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing and collaboration. What followed was a myriad of web-based tools, applications, and platforms, most famously Facebook and Twitter, that allowed people to easily update, share, and access news and information in real time. The connections within our social graph allow both brands and consumers the opportunity to leverage on the relationships between individuals to offer a richer online experience.
At the same time, these tools changed the way people create and consumed media; suddenly everyone could become a media outlet, able to easily create, edit, and share information not just with their online connections but with literally anyone in the digital space. There is simply too much to read. Content Curation – Growing Up and Coming of Age. The impetus to this blog post (developed via curation and creation), was my fascination when I came across the following story that broke in the middle of May: ”Man tracks stolen laptop hundreds of miles away, calls thief”. – A very real example of what is going on in the content curation space today.
@seanpower (Sean Power), an Ottawa, Canada native living in New York, was on a visit to Canada (without his laptop), when he discovered, through his Prey software, that his laptop was in the hands’ of a stranger back in New York. Immediately, the tweeting began. As the story evolved, Sean Power managed to follow his travelling laptop as a victim, as a private person, with an alias, eventually identifying the person who had stolen it and moving a potential criminal case to its conclusion and positive solution – all through communication via social media and with the help of various different stakeholders. Something is happening. Let’s look at some key figures: From the “oldies”. And AdWords. Capitalizing On Curation: Why The New Curators Are Beating The Old. Barring the invention of a "time turner" like the one Hermione Granger sported in 3rd Harry Potter novel, most of us will never have enough time to consume the information we might otherwise want to absorb.
There's simply too much info and too few waking hours. Enter the notion of curation, a relatively new term that is not unlike the editor of old, a trusted person or organization that filters information and aggregates it in an organized fashion for others to enjoy. According to Steve Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation, "curation is the new way of organizing the web going forward. " And no doubt he's right. Curious about why new curators like Thrillist and PSFK were thriving while the traditional publishing world floundered, I spent some time with their respective founders, Ben Lerer and Piers Fawkes. Thrillist, for the uninitiated, started in 2005 with a newsletter to 600 New Yorkers and is now in 18 markets with 2.5 million subscribers.
Guest Post: Three Reasons Why Curation Is Not A Fad. Posted by Tom Foremski - May 27, 2011 Oliver Starr is the Chief Evangelist for Pearltrees. Prior to this he was the first employee at TechCrunch. He has also held numerous executive positions in technology companies and has founded and successfully exited two startups of his own. You can follow him @owstarr on twitter. By Oliver Starr Perhaps you won't believe me since it's my job to "spread the gospel" of curation as the Chief Evangelist of Pearltrees but I think curation is here to stay. This year there has been a tremendous amount of buzz in Silicon Valley about curation.
With all the attention curation has suddenly received people are probably wondering whether this is just another fad or is it something bigger? First, curation is one of the underlying principles of the Web. The true history of the Internet is all about technologies and companies that made them mainstream. So what is this evidence?
So is curation here to stay? The Winnowing Oar | Thoughts on working and learning in a networked environment. 3 Reasons Curation is Here to Stay. Perhaps you won't believe me since it's my job to spread the gospel of curation as the Chief Evangelist of Pearltrees, but I think curation is here to stay. These are the reasons why I believe this is the case. This year there has been a tremendous amount of buzz in Silicon Valley about curation. Magnify.net CEO Steven Rosenbaum recently published a book, Curation Nation that has sparked a tremendous amount of conversation on the topic.
Likewise a post by Brian Solis has been retweeted thousands of times. My company, Pearltrees has just surpassed 100,000 curators and 10 million page views a month, and in the past two years nearly a dozen companies that incorporate digital curation into their models have launched. Oliver Starr is the Chief Evangelist for Pearltrees. Formerly he was the first employee at TechCrunch and the founder of MobileCrunch.
With all the attention curation has suddenly received, people are probably wondering if this is just another fad or is it something bigger? Bcr082 :: Shel Holtz on content curation. Distributing Value: Why Content Curation Is King. When Microsoft’s Bill Gates wrote his essay containing the phrase “content is king,” a snowball of reality began rolling down this digital mountain we all reside upon. It is true, content of all kinds is still king, and will always be, but the ways in which audiences consume it, this is what communicators need to understand – this is the so called “leading edge” of digital speak.
I know, volumes have been written about this subject, in case the reader is condescendingly chuckling. But, what about those reading this from “out there” who are not Brian Solis? Who are not social media mavens and life coaches with 20 billion twitter followers? Maybe you need to know about next-gen marketing strategies? The meaty tidbit for you impatient marketing gurus here is (or should be) “Making digestible content bon-bons.” Social Currency – Don’t Come Online Without It The social web is powered with a currency we are all familiar with, content. And Now the Good & Bad News Let me be blunt here. BUT! On curation and vision - UtestMe. (Starting from Carmen Nobel, HBS , via @johnsonwhitney ) “Business curation”… I like the idea.
I also think it’s impossible to use “curation” as an out-of-the-box solution that should “just work”, no matter the industry or company’s strategy. You cannot “curate” ugly, unlovable, dumb or dead products. “Curation” is a way to establish an honest relation with the customer. If all you want is to “flash” the customer with specs, features and fireworks, you don’t care about him and you don’t even care about what you are selling; you just need to make money and to get rid of those products as quickly as possible.
What is so exciting about “curation” is not necessarily the method itself, but the big change in approaching the relation between the customer, your products and, indirectly, you. “Curation means limiting the customer’s options.” How do you think lions hunt, by following 7 antelopes at once? Commercial products are not museum artifacts, indeed. There is no longer a customer. Is Content Curation the New Community Builder? Content curation has drawn my interest. I was at a tech conference last week and saw a couple of pretty cool applications for curating content. Setting a side the debate of right or wrong, these new content curation tools will make their mark.
Content curation, which involves human filtering and organizing is much different than content aggregation. Content aggregation sites use algorithms to find and link to content. Content curation is the practice of human filtering and organizing what you find interesting and useful. Over a year ago Mashable reported Why Content Curation Is Here To Stay; The debate pits creators against curators, asking big questions about the rules and ethical questions around content aggregation.
Media Curation is the emerging trend toward integrating and pondering media content using a mix of machine and human resources. Media Curation is a complex subject among media professionals, with notable professionals both for and against the practice. Content Curation: The new communications responsibility. Is Content Curation Just Reinventing the Wheel? | Copy Clique. Data Visualization in Motion. How Design Can Make Sense of Data Overload.
The 5 types of stories that make good Storifys. While covering Occupy Wall Street, many news sites have used Storify to capture on-the-ground reports from journalists and protesters. Storify, they say, gives them a way to help their audience make sense of the stream of information flowing out of social networks. The social news curation tool also helped news sites thwart last week’s media blackout. Storify CEO and Co-founder Burt Herman said there’s been a surge in the number of people using Storify to capture the protests. But he’s also seen news sites use it in interesting ways for a variety of other stories. I talked with Herman and journalists at Mother Jones, The Washington Post, Daily Beast and elsewhere to learn what stories it captures best. Social movements Several news sites have used Storify to enhance their coverage of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring.
About two-thirds of the Storifys that Mother Jones has created have been about Occupy Wall Street. Breaking news Internet humor, memes Weather. The Future of Social Media: 38 Experts Share Their Predictions For 2012. What is in store for 2012? With only two months remaining until the end of the year, there is no better time than now to pause and take a look towards the future. I predict that 2012 will be the year that marketers begin to look beyond the buzzword that is “social media” and focus on what truly matters – building engaging communities. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. are great channels/tools for communicating and pushing out content but without a focus on fostering a sense of community, your efforts will ultimately fall flat. But you don’t have to take my word for it. 1.
The integration of a credible and relevant social media presence will finally be viewed as strategy, rather than tactic. 2. Engagement is going to be a key performance indicator and main focus point with so many platforms that users can “belong to.” Transparency will become more of a theme. 3. We predict that the future holds more integration between social media and technology. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Social Media Curation. The Internet Is Full. What Makes A Great Curator Great? How To Distinguish High-Value Curation From Generic Republishing. Today content curation is "sold", promoted and marketed as the latest and trendiest approach to content production, SEO visibility, reputation and traffic building. But is it really so? Is it really true that by aggregating many content sources and picking and republishing those news and stories that you deem great is really going to benefit you and your readers in the long run?
Is the road to easy and effortless publishing via curation tools a true value creation business strategy, or just a risky fad? How can one tell? Photo credit: theprint Let me clarify a few key points: 1. 2. 3. 4. For these reasons, I think that much of the apparent new curation work being done is bound to be soon disappointed by the results it will gain. Highly specific news and content channels, curated by passionate and competent editors will gradually become the new reference and models for curation work. Here's is my official checklist, to identify value-creation curation, from everything else. Why Curation? Creation and Curation. Managing Information Overload « Hans de Zwart: Technology as a Solution…
The trap of social media noise.