Quora content quality quelled by its own constituents Co-authored with Jennifer Leggio Have you ever been camping during the summer somewhere that happens to be notorious for it's yellow jacket population. You know, those little winged friends of ours that bite and sting? It's noon and you get out some hot dogs, burgers or veggie patties to throw on the grill and cook up for everyone. You then place said finished grilled product onto a plate, ready to enjoy and share with others. You turn around for one second and the buzzing "visitors" start pouring in, ready to devour what you just finishing cooking, swarming all over it, ruining it for everyone else. While the freedom to say what you want when you want it as quickly as you want is one of the famed beauties of communities built by today's social network environments, it is also its cancerous bane. The good news about Quora: the gems are there. There's one other problem that we see with this approach. What solves this problem? What do you think?
The 'interestingness curators' of social news David Rowan Editor of Wired magazine I write The Digital Life, a monthly tech column in our sister Conde Nast magazine, GQ. This is my column from last month's issue (dated December). Subscribe to GQ. Maria Popova calls herself an "interestingness curator". It's more an obsessive hobby than a job -- Popova works in New York for an ad agency -- but to thousands of iPad users @brainpicker now serves as a radical new form of daily magazine. In his prescient 1995 book Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte, the visionary founder of MIT's Media Lab, described how customised daily news would one day find you through "personal filters" that would understand your desires and interests. Welcome to the new era of social curation. Popova, for one, is convinced. It seems I'm not alone: a Pew survey of more than 2,200 Americans recently found that 75 percent of news consumed online was via links from social networking sites or email. It's a welcome trend -- with two qualifications.
Scoop.it is Tumblr without the blogging [Invites] 31 December '10, 01:20pm Follow TNW Quick Look Scoop.it is a new Web curation platform, giving users a personal place to share themed content. Hits: Easy, good-looking Web curation‘Suggested’ column makes finding new content easy. Misses: Is it different enough from “reblogging” and other curation services to make a mark? The details As well as being a super-simple blogging platform, Tumblr is a hugely popular place for people to “reblog” content from around the web. Scoop.it allows users to set up themed ‘Topics’. If you’re stuck for inspiration, a feed of ‘Suggested items’ can help you by seeking out content from around the social Web. Users can follow others’ topic pages and are able to suggest content to curators of those topics directly from the bookmarklet. Curation is a busy area right now. Will it take off? Scoop.it has set up 100 invites for The Next Web readers.
Scoop.it Brings ‘Curation Age’ Closer to Home We’re living in the so-called age of curation. And that’s great, because starting another for-pleasure blog becomes one more thankless full-time job, given time or the demands users start making on you if you ever get big. That’s why we’re so keen on Scoop.it (@scoop.it), which launched in private beta a few weeks ago. I’ve been fooling around with it and have managed to start curating three subjects, fed every two or three days (give or take): Non-Terrestrial Life, Social Storytelling, and Advancements in Light, AR Tech. How this differs from an offering like Pearltrees: your curated media is automatically put into a paper.li/Flipboard-style format, making it pleasant and easy to read, skim and share. Based on keywords you input when you first create a topic, it will also crawl social/news sites and recommend content for you to post. Scoop.it is promising. If you want to give it a go, shoot me an email – angela [dot] natividad [at] gmail [dot] com – and I’ll send you an invite.
Guest post: Why this could be the moment for the curators This is a guest post by Guillaume Decugis, CEO, also the company behind Scoop.it. Over the past few months, there’s been an interesting number of new developments with regards to Web Curation, following several predictions that this would become a hot topic or even a billion dollar opportunity. What’s this all about? A definition I like for web curation is Rohit Bhargava’s: A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. How can you sort out signal (information) from noise (pointless babbles) in the social Web? Bloggers have been the Web 2.0′s journalists and writers, curators could be its editors. There’s been several innovation layers on curation. First, some thought on how Twitter would provide this necessary curation. The other idea was to use algorithms. Some – and I’m among them – think this is not enough and that curation is more than filtering. - Algorithms are gamed, people are not.
Buzzing with Social Curation Tools! Today, we are all facing information overload, and it is often difficult to find what we are looking for, especially if we are looking for updated collections of resources to support a topic, issue or idea. Major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo don't exactly do a great job in assisting either, which might also be partially due to the growing influence and spam of 'Search Engine Optimization (SEO)' gurus, engines and companies. It is amazing how much spam comments I get on this blog alone (10 - 20 spam comments a day!), thanks to SEO strategies. Amazingly annoying! As Yahoo is trying hard to kill (sell) off Delicious gently, it is perhaps time to find and explore other alternatives to sort out my management of juicy learning resources and discoveries (URLs). While the buzz word of 2010 was 'Social Media', don't be surprised if 'Curation' or 'Social Curation' (attempted definitions) will be the buzz word for 2011 (signs). WOW!
Content Curation versus Content Creation Scott Abel has a good post on content curation strategies. He writes, In order to develop an active and engaged audience, you have to publish as much interesting and informative content as possible — as often as possible! He notes how tweets and blog posts are short-lived, so you have to keep publishing all the time: … Add to the mix the sheer volume of tweets, posts, and updates being made every hour on socially-enabled sites around the digital globe, and you’ll soon realize the best strategy for getting noticed is to publish as often as possible, 24 hours a day, especially if you are trying to reach a global audience. In order to satisfy the demand for content, you need a content curation strategy: …I decided what was needed was a way to curate content and publish it to social networks automatically. For more, see Content Curation: Streamlining The Process Of Populating Your Social Networks With Relevant, Interesting and Engaging Content. I’ve noticed a trend about content this year.
Content Curation vs. Content Creation Just like anything in business, people expect value from their social media relationships. An important way to provide value to your network via social media is through a content strategy. A content strategy can include content that you create, as well as content you curate or share from other sources. How much content should you create versus curate? It’s up to you, but here are some things to consider: The Value of Content Curation There is just too much information coming into our lives on a daily basis. Sharing and Giving Content curation is nice because you’re giving back to your wider network by sharing other’s content. Creation of Expertise Content creation is an extremely valuable part of any online strategy because it’s how you can really show off your level of expertise. Content Balance As with anything, balance is best. What’s your approach to content strategy? (photo by Peat Bakke)
Social Media Content Curators Are Not “Just Filters” | Jamie Beckland We are now fully immersed in the era of the information stream. The stream requires new ways of curating relevant information, even as we grapple with insufficient tools. But, as the content universe grows rapidly, our capacity for curation must find new ways to scale. Museum curators don’t like the idea that the tech world has started talking about curation of social media, news, and other information streams. In fact, Pete at Newcurator got quite horked by all of these new self-proclaimed curators. Now, museum curators are not the most plebeian of peoples. But, they are dead wrong. This is how the Traditional Fine Arts Organization defines curation: (A) process of identification and organization of artworks in order to further knowledge. Curators take all of the information available as of “right now,” and create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is, of course, the same in social media. Is all social media engagement an act of curation?
Curation Makes the Difference, or Why Seth Godin is (Finally) Wrong About Something | Jamie Beckland Seth Godin has an interesting post about the rise of “drive by culture”. He argues that the dramatic rise in content found online, and the incredible ease of finding it, has created a culture of “clickers, stumblers, and jaded spectators.” He is right. Godin first lauds the creators, makers, and designers for bringing life into the web, and for pushing boundaries. But, that logic is fundamentally flawed, because Godin has surmounted the greatest challenge of the web: the challenge of curation. The web has put the power of publishing into each individual’s hands. And, of course, that means that there is a lot of stuff online that is really bad. So, we fumble our way from link to link, bumping through lots of stuff that just doesn’t quite apply right now, looking for that one spark of brilliance that is perfect for this particular moment. Hence, the need for curation. Here are the ways people are trying to improve web curation: Did I miss any curation methods?
How to Grow a Following With Other People’s Popular Content There’s an obvious catch-22 in social media marketing. In order to grow your audience, you need good content. Good content takes time – to research, write, and promote. But, without an audience, you can’t justify spending the time. You’re trapped. That’s where content curation gives you an edge. What Is Content Curation? Content curation is the process of reviewing and filtering articles and blog posts from across the web. It is NOT stealing other people’s blog posts and placing them on your site. Every time you look at Twitter for interesting links from your network or share an important article on Facebook, you’re curating content. Carrying the burden of content creation? Content curation helps shift the burden of blogging, and even tweeting, to someone else. The most basic form of content curation is the retweet. Here are five ways that curation helps you create more content in less time: #1: Curation Allows You To Easily Do “Roundups” And “Recaps” Speed has its own momentum.
Introducing Mashable Follow, Our New Social Layer Mashable | The Social Media Guide We're excited to announce today the beta launch of a new social layer we call Mashable Follow. This project is the start of a significant shift for Mashable in 2011, as we evolve from being a purely editor-driven news site to becoming a true news community that seeks to engage our readers in the news process. Beyond personalization, we believe that curation is the next great wave in news, and empowering our community to choose the news of the day is the ultimate aim of the Follow project. The Engagement Era If you're a Mashable reader, chances are you're already among the most engaged news consumers on the web: Which led us to the question: How do we make Mashable more social, more useful and more personalized to you? That was the starting point for Mashable Follow, which enters beta testing today. Mashable Follow: A Better Mashable Experience What is Mashable Follow? The downside of all this new content: More content for readers to sift through! Just the Start
Developing IBM’s largest Twitter profile: grassroots marketing the @developerWorks way « CagedEther: Corporate blogging news, statistics and social media tidbits I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Frank Carlos, a grassroots marketing expert on the IBM developerWorks team. Among his many accomplishments has been the development of the @developerWorks Twitter profile which has amassed a princely 33,000 followers. In my mind, this makes Frank something close to the Ashton Kutcher of the B2B tech world. So, how did he do it? A few lessons came out of the conversation with Frank. Curation is the key The @developerWorks twitter account works as a syndication channel: posting links to content from across the developerWorks site. Let’s be clear though, the role of curator involves some serious graft. Focus on the audience developerWorks is an IBM resource for developers and IT professionals, allowing them to build skills around the gamut of technologies that IBM solutions touch. Going after popular topics is a shrewd play that has obviously paid off for the @developerWorks account. Let folks know you’re out there Prove the results of your work