New content and better access = content curation | It seems that the latest buzzword around the web is ‘content curation’. There are literally millions of posts about this already, and new tools and new marketing strategies are being deployed to meet this new demand. Even the kids are curating, and in so doing are learning that Curation is the new search tool. Take a look at Content Curation, Social Media and Beyond. Content Curation: Definition and Generation, raises a few essential points: Finding the best content. Adding value. Crediting. So in a way, a content curator is continually asked to assume stewardship responsibility for digital content in ever increasing number, size, and diversity of type. Just as I rely on information discovery to push my own thinking, I also rely on content curators to add value and credibility to the information that they share with me. Content curation is part of an overall strategy to tame information chaos. In a socially connected world, it’s amazing what a difference a few months can make.
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.
Social content curation – a shift from the traditional | The notion of content curation is one that has traditionally been associated with libraries, archivies, galleries, or organisations working with objects or data in some way. For example, in the DCC Curation Lifecycle (UK) you will see a complex flow of the “appraise and select” activities which requires data managers to “evaluate data and select for long-term curation and preservation”. So ‘selection’ or ‘acquisition’ is then closely linked to a repository or institutional policy on collection development. Now the extraordinary thing is that the term ‘curation’ has become one of the latest buzz-words in the social online sphere, which has been transformed into an activity that is both about marketing and about organisation of the vast information flow that is delivered via social media. Social networking has definitely provided us with main channels for information flow. It comes down to organizing your sources, knowing which of them are trust worthy, and seeing patterns.
Welcome to the Age of Curation Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps coined a phrase Friday for something many have been talking about since Apple launched the iPad about six weeks ago. “Curated computing” refers to the way Apple staff examines each piece of software written for iPhone OS devices before allowing it into (or blocking it from) the App Store. Epps is almost certainly not among the first 10,000 people on the planet to observe that the iPhone OS does not allow users to install whatever programs they wish, unless the devices are jailbroken. For that reason, it’s tempting to write off her coinage as an attention-grabbing rehash of a well-worn meme — especially because she plans to take this show on the road at conferences to talk about this observation. However, Epps is onto something with this word, curated. Curation is the positive flip side of Apple’s locked-down approach, decried as a major, negative development in computing by many observers, present company included. For example: See Also:
The End Of Hand Crafted Content Old media loves nothing quite so much as writing about their own impending death. And we always enjoy adding our own two cents – the AP not knowing what YouTube is, the NYTimes guys reading TechCrunch every day, etc. Speaking broadly, I like what Reuters, Rupert Murdoch and Eric Schmidt are saying: the industry is in crisis, and the daring innovators will prevail. Personally, I still think the best way forward for the best journalists, if not the brands they currently work for, is to leave those brands and do their own thing. But as one of the innovators in the last go round, I think there’s a much bigger problem lurking on the horizon than a bunch of blogs and aggregators disrupting old media business models that needed disrupting anyway. Old media frets over blogs and aggregators that summarize content and link back to the original source. For our part, we throw a party when someone “steals” our content and links back to us. But even then, companies like ours can find a way to compete.
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 farms I've been writing a lot about so-called 'content farms' in recent months - companies like Demand Media and Answers.com which create thousands of pieces of content per day and are making a big impact on the Web. Both of those two companies are now firmly inside the top 20 Web properties in the U.S., on a par with the likes of Apple and AOL. Big media, blogs and Google are all beginning to take notice. Chris Ahearn, President of Media at Thomson Reuters, recently published an article on how journalism can survive in the Internet age. I started my analysis of Demand Media in this August post. In November I explored more about how Demand Media produces 4,000 pieces of content a day, based on an interview I did with the founders in September. Low Quality, High Impact The bottom line is that the quality of content produced by these 'content farms' is dubious, which has an impact on both publishers and readers. Can Quality Survive? Google Needs to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee See also:
Scoop.it masterclass I've written about Scoop.it several times recently, but I'm still getting blank looks from lots of folks, so here's the how, and more importantly the why, of Scoop.it: Curation, it's all about curation. What is curation? Adding value to information. Activity - publish, don't just read. Share - don't just publish. RSS - use Scoop.it's "RSS everywhere" to keep up to date with what your community is doing on the site, especially topics/followed. If you like playing games, remember to check out the leaderboard. Don't try to reproduce a community you are already a member of on another network, create a unique Scoop.it community composed of the best contributors. The Big One: Why do I want to do this?
Content Curation & Fair Use: 5 Rules to being an Ethical Content Curator * Update: I have a much lengthier updated post that incorporates the material below: Content Curation: Copyright, Ethics, & Fair Use Recently, Kimberley Isbell of the Nieman Journalism Lab cited a Harvard Law report and published an extensive post on news aggregation and legal considerations. From a curation perspective, the whole article is interesting, but what was the most surprising was that her recommendations for being an ethical content aggregator, were the same as being an effective content curator. The five recommendations are below. 1. Marketing reason: The more you link to third parties, the more likely they are to link back to you – which ultimately improves your SEO. 2. Marketing reason: A good content curator is selective an only links to the most relevant content on a specific topic or issue. 3. Marketing reason: Demonstrating that you have curated content from a wide variety of sources, and content from some very reputable sources, makes you more credible as well. 4. 5.
Content Curation: It's Going to Be HUGE It's counter-intuitive--especially to Americans. But often less is more. When Erin Scime wrote a blog titled: "Content Strategist as Digital Curator", it's pretty clear that she didn't expect to stir up a whole lot of emotions and anger. "I feel like there are a lot of bitter librarians out there," Scime told me. But the buzz around curation threatens more than librarians--there's a posse of PhD's with pitchforks and torches that didn't much like what Scime had to say. What heresy did Scime actual dare to blog about? Scime today is the Content Strategy Lead at HUGE in Brooklyn--whose clients include CNN IKEA, Pepsi, Jet Blue, IVillage, and Penton Media. For a former student of Curatorial studies and information sciences to embrace the democratization of the word "curation" rattled some cages. "When I was in library school it was very oriented toward managing digital collections, even archives. "It's actually probably the scariest part for our clients because legal red flags go up.
Don't just move the information, curate it! — The People Equation I recently attended a local art competition called ArtPrize. The free event is billed as “radically open”, meaning any artist, venue and citizen can participate. The openness creates a pretty random experience: grab a map, walk around downtown and check out the art. The positive vibe was due to something else. My experience with this art venue had me wondering: does curation have a role in the workplace? Normally, we don’t think of the word “curator” and “workplace” in the same sentence. The word curator is derived from the Latin word cura meaning “care”. Now, you may be wondering, “Isn’t curating just a fancy term for filtering information?” Not exactly. Sharing. Filtering is a higher level of information transfer, where the person doing the filtering sorts the content a bit, paying attention to what parts should be left out. Curating. Thinking you might want to add “curator” to your skill set? Decide who needs to hear your message. Determine the best way to communicate.
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. 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. The "Web 2.0″ concept, despite its limitations, demonstrates the relationship among innovations as varied as Wikipedia, You-Tube and blogs. The founding principles 1st frontier...
Power Tools for Content Aggregation and Curation Maybe you don't have the resources to develop a lot of content, or maybe you're a professional association that wants to serve its members better by being super helpful. Add that there are many more content creators, inside and outside organizations, and you see how curating information as content strategy could be a very elegant option. Noting the evolution on the World Wide Web quickly to show you a pattern that went in lockstep with use. You had forums and discussion boards, many still very active, Web sites, then journals, which evolved into blogs with RSS (real simple syndication) capability to package and read feeds, social bookmarking and networks, and then media sites to upload and view videos, photographs, etc. Each set of tools building on the next, thriving when filling a specific need, and evolving or morphing into something else as appropriate. Real time logs I suppose I'm quite old fashioned to be still using a blogging platform in a blog format to publish content. So what?