Curating the Best of the Web: Video The Internet is awash in content — and a whole lot of it is junk, spam or inane status updates. How do you begin to navigate through the zillions of news articles, Web sites, tweets and other stuff online to find content that matters to you? You need digital curators. To see the full article, subscribe here. Screen shot of Nizmlab, a site that sifts through online videos. Screen shot of Chunnel.tv. The Discipline of Content Strategy We, the people who make websites, have been talking for fifteen years about user experience, information architecture, content management systems, coding, metadata, visual design, user research, and all the other disciplines that facilitate our users’ abilities to find and consume content. Article Continues Below Weirdly, though, we haven’t been talking about the meat of the matter. We haven’t been talking about the content itself. Yeah, yeah. We know how to write for online readers. But who among us is asking the scary, important questions about content, such as “What’s the point?” As a community, we’re rather quiet on the matter of content. Do you think it’s a coincidence, then, that web content is, for the most part, crap? Dealing with content is messy. And yet, the web is content. And that’s where content strategy comes in. What is Content Strategy? Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content. At its best, a content strategy defines: BUT.
News curation: finally, social media's killer app? FORTUNE -- Even the most casual social network user will admit that the Facebook or Twitter experience can be overwhelming -- that merciless stream of status updates and shared content, which sometimes feels less like a stream and more like a deluge, waits for no man, woman, or Web crawler. Of course, there's good reason to feel that way: Facebookers share 30-billion plus pieces of information each month, and Twitter users output 1 billion tweets weekly. There's a tremendous amount of digital information floating around and few great solutions for filtering it, making sense of it, and consuming it. That's changing. Nicholas Negroponte foreshadowed the current state of things back in 1995 with the "Daily Me," a customized news experience, but it's only been over the last 18 months that his idea has manifested itself via mainstream products and services. They all work differently. That same concept is at the core of the Twitter-focused start-up Sulia. More from Fortune:
Intellectual Value Intellectual Value A radical new way of looking at compensation for owners and creators in the Net-based economy. By Esther Dyson What happens to intellectual property when it gets on the Internet? The Net dramatically changes the economics of content. In the new communities of the Net, the intrinsic value of content generally will remain high, but most individual items will have a short commercial half-life. What will almost-free software and proliferating content do to commercial markets for content? In a new environment, such as the gravity field of the moon, laws of physics play out differently. Chief among the new rules is that "content is free." What should content makers do in such an inverted world? Of course, there still will be ways for content creators to be paid. I am not saying that content is worthless, or that you will always get it for free. The half-life of value Imagine you're a farmer in the 19th century headed into the 20th. Seen one, seen them all Approaching zero
Content Strategy: How and Why to Curate Content Most of us understand the value of sharing information. But when the information belongs to others, we wonder “what’s the point?” Yet, as massive amounts of information abound, the art of content curation can help us provide resources to our audiences while positing ourselves as an authority. Here’s how. Curate When You Can't Create It takes more than just words to create content. Where do you turn to find new ideas or inspiration? Pointing others away from your site shouldn’t be regarded as poor marketing, but rather as a savvy way to position yourself and your company as an industry authority. Additionally, sharing secondary resources says that you and your company thinks outside the box. According to Andew Hannelly in his article Needles, Haystacks, and Content Curation for The Magazine Group’s Engage blog, how a company exhibits others information is what customers will regard as their end product. How did you present it to them? The Wisdom on Curated Content
Curation - The Third Web Frontier Posted by Guest Writer - January 8, 2011 Here is a guest article by Partice Lamothe - CEO of Pearltrees (Pearltrees is a consulting client of SVW.) This is a lightly edited version of "La troisième frontière du Web" that appeared in the magazine OWNI - Digital Journalism - March 2010. The article argues that the founding pricinciples of the Internet are only now being implemented and that the next frontier is in organizing, or curating, the Internet. By Patrice Lamothe Everyone realizes that the web is entering a new phase in its development. One indication of this transition is the proliferation of attempts to explain the changes that are occurring. Although these explanations are both pertinent and intriguing, none of them offers an analytical matrix for assessing the developments that are now underway. The "real time web," for example, is one of the clearest and most influential trends right now. In contrast, other explanations are far too broad to serve any useful purpose.
Content Curation versus Content Creation | Uptown Treehouse Blog As many of us know, in the social media marketing game content is king! Without anything to Tweet about or post about on Facebook our communities would fall by the wayside and our customers would stop listening to us. For most brands, the first question that must be answered before starting a social media strategy is “Where do we find good content to post about?” Creating content can be very expensive and time consuming. At Uptown Treehouse, we are responsible for reaching technologists and software developers on behalf of our Microsoft clients. Amongst the two communities that we manage on behalf of Microsoft we are responsible for 20 Tweets and 5 Facebook posts every day. RSS Feeds: Identify a list of blogs and news sources that consistently publish content that your audience enjoys. Twitter Lists: Twitter allows you to create lists containing people of interest. Google Alerts: You’ll want to know every time someone is talking about your brand, product or service online. Facebook Lists:
Curation And The Human Web... Posted by Tom Foremski - November 16, 2010 There is no doubt in my mind that the topic of curation and the Internet, is an important one and that it will be a dominant topic in 2011. Curation is important because we are reaching the limits of what can be achieved through algorithms and machines in organizing and navigating the Internet. Aggregation looks like curation but it's not. I define curation as a person, or a group of people, engaged in choosing and presenting a collection of things related to a specific topic and context. Aggregation employs software (algorithms) and machines (servers) to assemble a collection of things related to a specific topic and context. Aggregation tools can be employed by curators but the human act of curation adds a layer of value that aggregation alone cannot provide. A good example is Techmeme, the news aggregator run by Gabe Rivera. Techmeme uses an algorithm to find and publish links to the most important tech news of the day.
Why Social Media Curation Matters - Technorati Blogging Over the past few weeks I've raved about the current raft of social media curation start-ups. I've rambled on and on about all of the new features that are being added to sites like Curated.By, Storify and Keepstream. What I haven’t explained to my friends, family, Twitter followers and just about anybody I engage in tech conversation with for more than a couple of minutes, is why it all matters. With registered Twitter users numbering somewhere in the region of 150 million, their fire hose is pumping out tens of millions of tweets a day. Granted, not all of this data is worth capturing. So, how do you decide what’s worth keeping?
Why Impresarios (Not Algorithms) Will Rule Web Video According to a number of predictors, and my friends, 2011 is going to be the year of curated video. The old, algorithmic approach is out, and instead we'll see audiences flocking to videos selected for your viewing pleasure by friends (in the case of Facebook) and experts (maybe even from YouTube). Yes, it looks like "curation" is bound to be the first big buzzword of 2011. But when it comes to video, before there was curation there was programming. The kind that big network honchos would do. Take Fred Silverman, for example. Back when he was curating network TV, there were only three networks to watch. Even though many of the principals are similar, what worked for network TV won't drive web video to success. We're going to see a lot of blather over the next months about video curation, but remember that it's really just an extension of network programming. It's about the audience Silverman changed the face of Saturday morning programming by understanding, and super-serving, the kids.