Signal, Curation, Discovery - John Battelle's Searchblog This past week I spent a fair amount of time in New York, meeting with smart folks who collectively have been responsible for funding and/or starting companies as varied as DoubleClick, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Federated Media (my team), and scores of others. I also met with some very smart execs at American Express, a company that has a history of innovation, in particular as it relates to working with startups in the Internet space. I love talking with these folks, because while we might have business to discuss, we usually spend most of our time riffing about themes and ideas in our shared industry. Since its inception, the web has presented us with a discovery problem. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our first solution to the web’s initial discovery problem was to curate websites into directories, with Yahoo being the most successful of the bunch. But directories have clumsy interfaces, and they didn’t scale to the overwhelming growth in the number of websites.
Magazine-Style Scoop.it Just Might Be the Perfect Curation Tool for Teachers Finding educational resources on the web can be a time-consuming job. Once you find the resource, it must be categorized in some way. Bookmarking is one solution but lately there has been a surge of curation tools. I have written about Storify for Educators and Curated.by as possible curation tools for teachers. I liked the fact that you could embed Storify right into your blog/website. But not everyone has a blog and the embed feature is not mush use to them. That’s where Scoop.it comes into play. Scoop.it Unfortunately, Scoop.it is in private beta so you have to apply for an invite. In early February I will be co-presenting with Kelly Kronfeld and Gigi Wheeler about using Google Sites as a collaboration tool for teachers and students. Scoop.it will crawl the web and make suggestions or you can add your own. I scooped my content and then found out you can edit each scoop just in case the scoop doesn’t capture the whole essence of the site. I really like the layout of Scoop.it. Scoop.it
Jonathan Stray: In 2011, news orgs will finally start to move past the borders of their own content Editor’s Note: We’re wrapping up 2010 by asking some of the smartest people in journalism what the new year will bring. Today, our predictor is Jonathan Stray, interactive technology editor for the Associated Press and a familiar byline here at the Lab. His subject: the building of new multi-source information products, and whether it’ll be news organizations that do the building. 2011 will be the year that news organizations finally start talking about integrated products designed to serve the complete information needs of consumers, but it won’t be the year that they ship them. News used to be more or less whatever news organizations published and broadcast. Unencumbered by such tribalism — and lacking content creation behemoths of their own — the information technology industry has long understood the value of curating multiple sources, including traditional news content. But as of yet, there are few integrated products. This is also about being multi-platform.
iPads, Print-on-Demand Slowly Transform Magazines in 2010 This revolution is going to take its time. It’s been a year of high expectations but little fulfillment for those who thought 2010 might forever change the way we read magazines. We’ve seen that disappointing uses of new tools, limited audience interest, and small initial financial returns are going to result in a gradual shift, not a sudden transformation. The iPad certainly hasn’t made print magazines extinct, and in fact some of the early iPad efforts may even have discouraged readers a bit. The Challenges of Innovation for the iPad The number of print magazines stayed steady in 2010, with 193 launches and 176 closures — a great improvement over 2009’s remarkable 596 casualties, as reported by Folio. Multiple magazines soon released their own dedicated apps for the iPad, such as Wired’s much-touted app, which in June 2010 sold 105,000 copies, exceeding that month’s newsstand sales. The home page of the Project magazine app allows users to select which edition to purchase Related
The Role of Curation in Developing and Transmitting News A new frontier of opportunity is in the ways news is being developed, packaged, and transmitted. Curated filters are becoming more interactive. From the New York Times offering personalized news recommendations, to this past week's launch of TheDaily, a subscription-based app for the iPad indexed by Andy Baio on the Web, and the upcoming release of News.me. Personalization has been around for a while. Forget the press release. All those pitching with one, do you copy this? Curating news delivery People are getting used to seeing what other people are reading and talking about out in the open -- in public streams like Twitter and Facebook, as well as deeper features on blogs. Mainstream media is launching initiatives that more closely align with this new reality. starting with building a platform -- where you literally begin the process of creating a content hub on one of your online properties to attract traffic, conversation, and conversion. Business is social
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.
Why Content Curation Is Here to Stay Steve Rosenbaum is the CEO of Magnify.net, a video Curation and Publishing platform. Rosenbaum is a blogger, video maker and documentarian. You can follow him on Twitter @magnify and read more about Curation at CurationNation.org. For website content publishers and content creators, there's a debate raging as to the rights and wrongs of curation. The debate pits creators against curators, asking big questions about the rules and ethical questions around content aggregation. In trying to understand the issue and the new emerging rules, I reached out to some of the experts who are weighing in on how curation could help creators and web users have a better online experience. The Issues at Hand Content aggregation (the automated gathering of links) can be seen on sites like Google News. But all that changes with curation — the act of human editors adding their work to the machines that gather, organize and filter content. Who are curators? Where We Stand Now
Decker Marketing » What’s Here? Announcing Mass Relevance! For the last couple years I’ve thought a lot about where user generated and social content are going. It’s valuable, but growing exponentially, more of it is real-time, and there’s a difficult-to-manage fragmention of customer experiences. I’m excited to announce a company my co-founders and I have formed to go after a big market problem. Today we announced the launch and funding of my new company, Mass Relevance, co-founded with Brian Dainton and Eric Falcao. Chloe Sladden on how Twitter and TV work well together Also, there was a serendipitously-timed cover story in Fast Company on Twitter and TV that is at the bullseye of what Mass Relevance is doing, specifically serving entertainment and media. We will have our website up soon, with a Mass Relevance blog. Here’s the press release going out… Social Marketing Innovator Sam Decker Launches New Company to Help Brands Achieve Real-Time Engagement Mass Relevance Market Opportunity An explosion of social experiences has hit the mainstream.
Collector or Curator? Becoming a Social Connoisseur It used to be that you were a wine or art collector to be considered a connoisseur. These curators of their personal taste and beauty would search for pieces that fit a collection they would be proud to show off to their friends. Picking what went into their collection wasn’t easy, because it had to fit a certain rule set to showcase the very best. The very act of curating was an art form unto itself. True discerning curators never just share their physical objects; They share the stories behind them, about why each object was hand picked and the personal connection they had with the object that makes each share come alive. Today’s modern day curator is a curator of knowledge. You might be saying to yourself right now, “What does this all have to do with me?” Here are 5 ways to become a modern day social connoisseur: 1) It Speaks to Me – simply put, what you read or see has to touch how you feel. 3) Deliver your Point - If it didn’t deliver and the author rambled, forget about it.
About Search And Content Curation. Initially when people used Google to search for topics and enhance their knowledge about a certain topic it gave them a feeling of having the world in their hands and the fact that any information needed was just a click away surely gave a feeling of power and control. Want to know about anything – Just Google It. The whole activity of search gave immense satisfaction and the discussions among peer groups gave an aura of superiority, especially, if you had shortlisted , relevant and important content which others were unable to find on Google. But all the search activity does involve time and once the newness should I say or the glamour and curiosity behind any activity fades away the law of ‘Diminishing Marginal Utility’ starts becoming applicable and you start thinking and working out options of getting a ready list of relevant content links available to you instantly. That is exactly what the next big evolution of the web is about ‘Content Curation’. Relevant Links:
The Future of Content - Part 2 - Aggregation and Curation | Defining New Media Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:24 — 19.6MB) In part 2 of the future of content we cover why content is not king, aggregation, and curation. In part 1 we covered what is content, why we need to rethink the definition of media, and the publishing world we live in today. So why is content not king? Content is not king because it is not scarce. Media/content is made and consumed just about everywhere. There are only 24 hours in a day. We also talk about the aggregation economy. We then move onto curation. Then we compare aggregation to curation. Aggregation - Just brings stuff together. That’s alot to cover for one show and we could have easily made this a whole week of shows.
The Future of Content - Part 1 | Defining New Media Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:08 — 13.9MB) What is the future of content? What is the future of media? To market and connect with your audience today but in the future I believe understanding content/media will enable you to successfully transition in this new era we find ourselves in. Today we start a multi-part series on The Future of Content. Information. Media. Content. A blog post? We have to rethink and redefine in our minds what we consider media and content. Your customer lives in a multi-tethered asynchronous relationship with media. Which means… they do other stuff while they watch TV.
The Future of Content - Part 3 - The Role of Content | Defining New Media Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:48 — 14.5MB) Here we are in part 3 of the Future of Content. If you just landed here catch Part 1 and Part 2. Today we talk about the role of content in your marketing strategy. We also reset a bit and cover the why. Thank you to everybody who emailed and mentioned that I didn’t spend enough time in this area! To drive sales and create leads. In a way content marketing can be seen like branding where we talk about mindshare. But it gets deeper… you also want to enable your target audience to share and to take ownership.