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Algorithms Coupled with Human Curation Can Generate a Great User Experience: The Twitter #NASCAR Experiment

Algorithms Coupled with Human Curation Can Generate a Great User Experience: The Twitter #NASCAR Experiment | Managing options | Scoop.it
From twitter.com - June 14, 2012 4:18 AM

Robin Good: As you have probably already read somewhere else, this last weekend, Twitter launched a first-of-a-kind type of page.

 

The page, which you can see here: https://twitter.com/hashtag/nascar revolves around the last NASCAR car racing event, that took place last Sunday and it apparently aggregates interesting tweets and comments from a group of passionate NASCAR fans.

The interesting thing is that this page is in fact not an automatically aggregated page of tweets having a specific hashtag. There have been plenty of tweets in here with no hashtag at all, or not even mentioning explicitly NASCAR.

 

This is a human-curated page of tweets, selected from a curated list of relevant people for this topic.

 

This is the real news.

 

By mixing and matching technology-powered identification of relevant people and tweets for a specific topic, with an active layer of human curation allows Twitter to generate a page that's filled with value.

 

Here's what Twitter itself wrote on his blog before launching it: "...throughout the weekend – but especially during the race – a combination of algorithms and curation will surface the most interesting Tweets to bring you closer to all of the action happening around the track, from the garage to the victory lane."

 

And while this is only a first experiment from Twitter, I would bet that it will not be the last.

The value provided by adding a human curation layer, both to the selection of the sources as well as to the selection of the actual tweets, is huge.

What's your take?

Twitter NASCAR page: https://twitter.com/hashtag/nascar ;
 

Twitter blog announcement: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/06/off-to-races-with-nascar.html ;

 

Check also: http://rossneumann.tumblr.com/post/24960053871/twitter-wants-to-put-social-media-editors-out-of ;


Via Robin Good
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A Mix of Algorithms and Human Curators Is The Solution To Content Curation Scalability Issue

A Mix of Algorithms and Human Curators Is The Solution To Content Curation Scalability Issue | Managing options | Scoop.it
From pandodaily.com - September 13, 2012 5:02 AM

Guillame DeCugis: "This is a very interesting piece by Erin Griffith (again!) on the potential scalability issues of content curation. You can pass quickly on her first part where she easily bashes the usual concerns about the curation word being overhyped and over used.

 

She makes a really good point on her second part, building on the experience of Behance, the platform to publish one's creative work: using a mix of algorithms and human curation is a part of the answer to this scale issue. 

 

But another way to scale curation is to add a topic-centric layer. In the problem she describes (which is typically Behance's problem), scaling up is tough because curation is being applied to sort out the best content on a unique dimension: a home page that's the same for everyone.

 

"Behance’s front page could no longer display what algorithms determined was the most popular art within [the] site’s community. Because of boobs. They are universally the most popular thing on the Web, and not even a tasteful, creative site like Behance is safe when the “wisdom of the crowd” is involved.


To be clear — boobs are welcome on Behance, but the site skews toward commercially viable work. A porn pit may entice creative directors but not in the way Behance wants to entice them." she funnily writes.

 

If you added topics to that, you can solve the problem by having people follow whichever topics they want.

 

And I'm not talking about the usual 10-20 categories you find on any content sites. I'm talking about long-tail, user-created topics that any user can opt in to follow or unfollow. Boobs fans can then follow dozens of Boobs topics curated by other fellow users without having to pollute the experience for everyone else.

 

By mixing a topic-centric model with curation, you apply it to as many dimensions as your users will decide to curate. That's the model we've been using at Scoop.it and so far, it scales pretty well, doesn't it?"

 

Robin Good: For the record you may want to check this video of Gabe Rivera from Techmeme at LeWeb 2008 already discussing this issue and arriving at the same conclusions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Zi_U6iZxU there's no way to build a perfect news or aggregation engine. The best solution is indeed a mix of aggregation and filtering tools matched by a topic-expert curator.

 

 

 


Via gdecugis, Heiko Idensen, Robin Good
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The Content Curation Conundrum: How To Strike a Balance Between Automated Aggregation and Manual Curation

The Content Curation Conundrum: How To Strike a Balance Between Automated Aggregation and Manual Curation | Managing options | Scoop.it
From www.fastcompany.com - July 6, 2012 10:25 AM

Robin Good: Many content curation tools promise to make your content publishing job easier, faster and better. But is it really so? Does less work and more automated aggregation/filtering guarantee a higher quality result?

 

Christa Carone writes on Fast Company: "New content curation tools make automating the job easier--but easy may not always be as effective.

 

It would be a mistake to let algorithms do the entire job for you. No one knows your audience like you do.

 

And, keeping the human touch in the process is more real, which is really important to today's info-overloaded consumer."

 

Yes, the human touch. Not the human click to rapidly share, repost or reblog. The human touch as in the act of adding value in ways that go beyond being someone who passes on interesting items.

 

And to achieve that, someone needs to manually stop, research, read, check and contribute something of value. it doesn't happen automatically.

 

"The companies that are truly winning over audiences and driving consumers are the ones that are experimenting with a balance of automated aggregation and human-directed curation.

 

It's a process of out-sourcing and in-sourcing.

 

I've been following Intel's approach. It recently launched iQ, an employee-curated digital magazine created to connect with a younger audience and share with them the bigger, living brand story.

 

Not only does the site provide original stories about tech, it also aggregates top tech stories from other sites that Intel's audience will find interesting... all closely watched by editor-in-chief Bryan Rhoades, who spurs conversations by judiciously placing some stories on the iQ homepage.


NASCAR, too, is experimenting in this space. A partnership with Twitter includes a site that compiles #NASCAR-related tweets from popular drivers, who send 140-character blasts from the track or wherever they may be-- along with those from sports writers and other industry folks.

 

They pull it off by using a search algorithm and human editors who understand narrative---and appropriate content."

 

Rightful. 7/10

 

Full article: http://www.fastcompany.com/1841964/the-content-conundrum-to-create-or-automate ;

 


Via Robin Good
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