"Is Online "Curation" the New "Aggregation"?" by PBS News Blog | PBS News Blog
December 1, 2010 at 4:42 PM EST Is online "curation" the new "aggregation"? In Tuesday's , veteran media analyst Bob Garfield blogs about online curation as the source of much of the vital information he comes across (if one considers viral videos and political gaffes "vital information"). Bob writes: "The nearly infinite supply of content demands that we rely on others -- either the crowd as a whole, or tribes with which we identify, or individual experts we've come to trust... For backup, Bob quotes Magnify.net CEO Steven Rosenbaum: "Aggregation without curation is just a that seems related, but lacks a qualitative organization." (Who didn't encounter the Dewey Decimal System as a kid and think, "Hey, that's some cool qualitative organization!"?) Curation isn't exactly a new concept -- though it's still unrecognizable by Microsoft spell-check. Of course there's no bigger or more relied-upon curator than PBS. How do you assess the value of credible curation versus auto-aggregation?
Innovation management, Idea management, Social Networking Software, Crowdsourcing
Viral Journalism and the Valley of Ambiguity
How much does search engine optimization play into how effectively a story is picked up virally? If a story contains rhetoric that is more likely to get passed on, even if it's "important" — famous names, scandal — does that play a role? Take recaps, here and elsewhere: I'm slowly drifting away from them because they seem to be increasingly simple plot recounts that go over the sexy sexiness of sexy sex and the fabulous fabulousness of fabulous fabulousness. Although recaps of the former type might be pop culture cotton candy, I can see how they'd be more likley to be shared than a close reading of a shot sequence. In general, nobody shares recaps. SEO will polish your turd, but it doesn't mean people will want to smell it. I was using recaps of an example of the kind of article packed with easy-to-digest rhetoric, and suggesting that articles with similar easy-to-digest rhetoric would be more likely to break the viral barrier than others. It's possible that this is generational.
Humans vs machines: Aggregation vs curation
Curation is becoming an increasingly important term and for good reason: the online world is increasingly messy, muddled and full of blind alleys. Search used to be the best way to navigate online but today it is only one part of an Internet user’s dashboard. Finding things is fine if you know what to look for, but search is increasingly less effective in judging the quality of links, or putting those links into a context. Blekko, the recently launched search engine tries to provide a context for search terms but it’s still not curation but aggregation So what is curation? Here is my definition: Curation is a person or persons, engaged in the act of choosing and presenting things related to a specific topic and context. An example of curation: the San Francisco De Young museums is exhibiting post-impressionist masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection. Aggregation is the collection of as many things that can be found related to a topic. - Pearltrees is dynamic.
Hunch
Why Social Media Reinvigorates the Market for Quality Journalism
Social media has created a human filter for quality content. The social web, like the old water cooler, favors conversations around news and even in-depth journalism that may not otherwise receive the exposure it deserves. Recent analysis of the most-tweeted stories from The Daily iPad app revealed that users shared more hard news stories over gossip and opinion pieces. This doesn't necessarily mean these are the stories most people are reading. The gossip articles (or “fluff” pieces) often out-perform news items in pageviews, often because that is what people are searching for. The incentive to share quality content is simple: A person may be more likely to read gossip, but they may share a news piece to shape their followers' perception of them. Searching for Quality The public perception was a non-factor, and users were more likely to share softer stories or those based on utility. So what about search? The Human Quality Vote For true quality, sometimes it takes a human touch.
Online Content Curation: The Key To Building Visibility, Authority And Value
As you are increasingly submerged by an endless flood of information, online content curators may provide a new, valuable service to anyone looking for quality information online: a personalized, qualified selection of the best and most relevant content and resources on a very specific topic or theme. Curated in real-time. When I first wrote about this, six years ago, I called this type of work newsmastering and newsradars, but now that the real-time element has come into play, as much as social media, video, Twitter and other new content sources, the original idea of what a newsmaster / content curator is and what tools and features are really needed has certainly started to change. Photo credit: Erkin Sahin Robert Scoble has recently posted on his blog a fascinating article entitled: Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators. But let's hit on the brakes for a minute and clearly point out what content curation is and why a "new media guide" like Scoble felt the need to make things clear.
Blippy / Purchases by people I follow
The Human Algorithm
When I became a reporter, almost 20 years ago, my job was to dig up scarce, precious facts and deliver them to a passive audience. Today, scarcity has been replaced by an unimaginable surplus and that audience is actively building its own newsroom. Journalists the world over are struggling to cope with a social and mobile tsunami of ‘user generated content’, to use an increasingly inadequate phrase. A common mistake for those seeking to cope with this profound disruption is to confuse technology with innovation. Genuine innovation requires a fundamental shift in how journalists think about their role in a changed world. I find it helps to think of curation as three central questions: * Discovery: How do we find valuable social media content? Without a doubt, verification is the greatest challenge. With some like-minded souls, I founded Storyful in early 2010. This video records the ebb and flow of a pitched battle between riot police and protestors on the Qasr al Nile bridge in Cairo.
