“Curation is a hot trend, some say it can change the Web”
Curated by
gdecugis
Curation = Finding, tagging, rating, commenting, updating, contextualising content
Scooped on:
Curation & The Future of Publishing
Curation & The Future of Publishing
This is an interesting recap by Brian Solis of the stakes and challenges of companies with regards to content marketing. This is based on a report by the Altimeter Group, Brian's firm, produced by Rebecca Lieb.
He makes a lot of interesting observations, starting from the one that social media 1.0 is dead and that effective strategies need to recognize that you're not dealing with a simple audience anymore but an audience with an audience with an audience. The report also defines 5 maturity stages for content marketing. Which one is yours? 
"Major brands are slowly discovering that e-commerce may not be the only revenue stream the digital world has to offer them." Andy Nibley wrote this guest post on Wired.com; he's the CEO of Yieldex. His take is that major retailers have such a big trafic they're now starting to make money not just by selling products but by selling ads to other retailers orbrands: "So here’s a fresh example of the internet’s law of unintended consequences: Corporations who never had an interest in publishing may find that there is money to be made by sharing their customers with other brands." The rationale being that ad margins can be higher than retail margins. What I feel this all means is that, in our noisy Web, catching the consumer attention becomes the greatest asset of all. 
Great blog post from Sarah Lacy on the fabulous success of Fab. "Fab didn’t scale like an ecommerce company, because it isn’t one. Sure, ecommerce is how they make money, but what drives the love for Fab is the content. Co-founders Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer are essentially magazine editors masquerading as etailers. Day-after-day, they are designing a gorgeous, aspirational life for you one item at a time. From the $5 wine cozy to the several thousand dollar Swarovski-crystal-encrusted animal head. And it’s a fabulous life millions of consumers want.. They drive the selection based more on emotion than data. They refused to make any decisions around what sold well for the first three months of the business, trusting their guts that if they love what they’re selecting, shoppers– or “readers”– will too. That isn’t an etailer. That’s Anna Wintour. “We needed to just let it develop,” says Goldberg. “We wanted people to look forward to opening the email and reading the site, no matter what they bought.” Added Shellhammer, “We do what a good editor does. We take stuff and put it together in a way that creates something new.” Everything is here : The power of personal taste, offering meaningful content throught smart and confident curation. There is nothing stronger to get your audience's attention and create a deep dialogue with them, especially as a brand. Push great content, do it genuinely and not only to sell, but because you care. Then, the rewards will be tremendous. 
Interesting infographic and data that shows how Marketers and Agencies look at Content Makreting as an opportunity. The Mashable title says it best: it's about sharing. But the Infographic kind of misses that, focusing too much on big brands and content creation, maybe overlooking the curation opportunity for marketers? (Full Infographic on the Mashable site) 
"NEW YORK—Shocked and saddened witnesses at the Huffington Post's news-aggregation facility have confirmed that employee Henry Evers, 25, died Wednesday ..." Hilarious! Must read... 
An interesting recap on what brands have been doing to leverage content publishing capabilities in a successful way. The recurring message in all these examples? Content Marketing works and is the new advertising as publishing gets democratized. Author Amy Vernon concludes that this trend just raises the bar for content creators like such as writers like herself, photographers or video producers: "It just means that we all need to make sure we're providing some sort of value to our readers." Interestingly, the democratization of publishing pushes creation quality up. I would add that it's not just because deep-pocket brands play the game too but also because "everyone is a publisher" means everyone is an active content distributor too. And we don't like to curate bad stuff... 
Investors see strong potential in the companies that curate, rather than create, content. A group of technologies broadly defined as “personalized news aggregators” or “content curators” have emerged to distribute information, recommend news articles to users and offer publishers opportunities to monetize content through targeted advertising.
Interesting recap of the startup ecosystem in the content space. Via axelletess 
At a time where some are thinking we urgently need an information diet, Brian Solis puts things in perspective: don't panic! What he describes on PandoDaily as "the fallacy of Information Overload" is the fact that while we all seem lost at one point or another because our world is changed by the social media revolution, it's both inevitable and something mankind will adapt to. This post is a great summary of the different ways we are affected and why we shouldn't try to move back to the previous state. But work on improving our filters. Curation, anyone? 
Very interesting blog post exploring the intersection between the new curators and the ones who have played this key role as trusted sources of information since a long time: reporters and journalists. "The concept of curating news is not new. One can look to the supply-chain process of a news organization to see that several roles (editor, managing editor, etc.) have curation as a core competency; that is, the organizing of information filed by reporters into a deliverable packages for readers. But with the push of social media and advancements in communications technology, the curator has become a journalist by proxy. They are not on the front lines, covering a particular beat or industry, or filing a story themselves, but they are responding to a reader need. With a torrent of content emanating from innumerable sources". or a curator is by definition leads by passion and a less neutral role? "..curators should have more freedoms than traditional reporters in a couple senses, in that part of the appeal of good curation is that it carries the person’s footprint. Opinion isn’t really a bad thing, and in fact gives the content shape in this context.” Interesting debate, where they key value stays the same: the curator has to find the best practices and guidelines to build trust with his/her audience, in a world where we receive a massive amount of information and content. 
Earlier this week, former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy launched PandoDaily.com with the goal of being "the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle". Really? But I thought the golden era of Tech Blogging was over (for Jeremiah Owyang and others)? I'm not sure whether Sarah Lacy agrees but what I like is the mode of operation she's chosen: "We want to break every story. But we also want to bring more civility into the blogosophere. We’ll link to people who beat us on a story and be good sports about it, as much as it pisses us off. (...) We’ll still publish the rants you’ve come to love from our mouthy contributors, but unless they’re newsy, they’ll go on something we’re calling “The Back Page.”" She also introduces the PandoTicker, a news timeline of external content that the site will link to throuh a post one "paragraph long, with one sentence of our analysis". So it seems that PandoDaily will be based on a mix of creation, external contributors and curation. Seems familiar? Looks to me like the HuffPo model - which I mean in a positive way as probably one of the only models that have been working in publishing lately. Surprising for those who followed the TechCrunch/AOL drama under Arianna Huffington's rule which led Lacy to quit? Maybe not so much. Smart move anyway: a good thing for startups and another sign of the growing importance of curation for publishing. (Read more on why she started it on Pandodaily.com). Watch this amazing video, prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films (http://www.thekhakigroup.com/). Publishing is not dead. It is alive as never before. You just need to do one thing : open your eyes to the values of your customers and publish content meaningful to them. Like curation, Publishing is about caring.
Yesterday, I curated an interesting analysis by Mathew Ingram on what Google had just done to its Search Engine, getting social in the results. I think it is interesting seeing also the counter-reactions to that move, one of the boldest being Mat Honan's on Gizmodo. Mat explains why he feels this created less acuracy for Google and threatened the Moutain View giant's domination on the Search market: "I just switched the default search engine in my browser from Google to Bing. And if you care about working efficiently, or getting the right results when you search, then maybe you should too." One interesting thing that Mat's point shows is the difficulty there is for an established company to act like a startup. Google has something to lose in that game. In a big way. But it's also the sign of great companies and great leaders to be able to make bold moves that are not always easy to understand first: IBM getting out of hardware, Apple extending out of the computer market with the iPod. Back to the curated search debate, I think we could also echo the voices of all those who have growningly complained about the fact Google Search was losing its edge and discouraging quality content production efforts. I don't think Mat disagrees with them: he's just showing consumers will not wait forever for Google to come out of that evolutionary process that started with real-time search, continued with Panda and is now becoming social search. Google (and others) seems to be convinced their long-term future is in social, however costly this might be in the short-term. Time will tell whether that was a mistake or not. But there's one thing you can't blame them for: not being willing to try. 
"With new changes that offer personalized search results -- most of which are being taken from its own Google+ social network -- Google has just made social connections and links the new search-engine optimization strategy" Interesting analysis by Mathew Ingram on what Google just did by tweaking search results to include Google + results in there. And in particular what this means for the Media industry. If you're not familiar with the change, the article describes it well and there's another piece you can check that will probably freak out some. To elaborate on Mathew's point, I would put it more concretely: the time where Media could simply use Twitter or G+ accounts like RSS feeds is over. User engagement is required and it means getting readers to like, comment, +1 and... curate your content. Clay Shirky once defined curation's role this way: "Curation comes up when search stops working". Well, now if you want your content to be searched, you better start by making it curated. |
This is a guest post on TechCrunch.com from Mitch Lazard, the CEO of mobile news reader Taptu. As such he has an interesting experience dealing with media publisher but interestingly he's been working for one himself: CNN. ![Why is Content Good for SEO [Infographic] | Curation & The Future of Publishing | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/2Y-PYxkl1OFNkJJaC2FMWDl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
An informative graph. Read also this blog post on Brafton that explores each part of the infographic. A great read and a great reminder of the importance of qualitative content not only to attract your audience but to be a must resource, easy to find.
"The power of content for SEO is clear, as 92 percent of marketers cite content creation as effective for search engine optimization. In MarketingSherpa’s latest Search Marketing Benchmark report, content came out a winner, named a top-performing strategy by survey respondents."
Again, be an amazing curator, push valuable content. The rest will follow naturally. Via Gerrit Bes 
There's a terrible stereotype about Web editors, that we just care about traffic. Page views, unique visitors, clicks, hits, eyeballs, drivebys, furtive peeks, longing glances and everything in between. And it's true! Except I'm here to tell you that there's no easy trick, no gimmick, to draw people to read your Website. Trust me, we've tried. And the magic came when you come back to the key: make a difference for your readers : So: 33 percent fewer posts; 40 percent greater traffic. It sounds simple, maybe obvious, but: We've gone back to our primary mission and have been focusing on originality. And it's working Being a good publisher and curate meaningfully is not only about knowing what to post but to become a unique resource and voice. 
This is a question that I found interesting on Quora because there were already lots of different answers. People obviously adressed the question by naming their favorite newsletters. I started to see a pattern as the common point of a lot of these answers was: they were curated newsletters. How's your view on my answer? Do you also see that as a common point of good newsletters? 
This post sumarizes Beth Kanter's talk at the Social Media 4 Non Profits Conference. Though the conference obviously focuses on NPO's, a lot of what's in there is generic enough so it's good reading, especially: - her interview with Robin 
Beth Kanter has been at the forefront of social media usage for non-profits and as such an expert curator. She wrote an interesting review of the book "The Information Diet" which I published the teaser video of a few weeks ago. As she points out, this is not an isolated piece but one that is related to other works to form a movement towards wider content consumption. A trend where curation has an essential role to play. But as Brian Solis pointed out a few days ago, information overload has a lot of benefits too. Probably more so than inconvenients. So just like a culinary diet means better rather than less, this is all a question of balance as we should dread Information... Anorexia. 
A very good blog post by Felix Salmon on what technologists understand faster than journalists : the idea of "stack", the key to embrace the shift in media now : "Technologists, on the other hand, intuitively understand the idea of “the stack”, which is the nerd version of “the platform” that all entrepreneurs and media gurus love to talk about incessantly. Essentially, they have spent their entire careers building things on other things. That happens in legacy media, too, sometimes: cable channels, for instance, live on a distribution platform owned by someone else. But print media in the US has historically been highly vertically integrated: the same company would create the content, edit it, print it, and distribute it directly to its customers’ front doors." Mathew Ingram already warned media publishers with a similar thought: it's a data platform. Now, when we think about these stacks, we feel they are not just creation + sharing. Yes, content creation is one stack and - as Dave Karp points out - it is synergetic with the sharing stack which amplifies it. But another stack is essential here: curation. Curation is not just sharing but brings context and meaning. Isn't it the missing piece of the puzzle (or the missing stack) in social media thus far? 
This is one of the first hands on reviews of Apple's new iBook publishing tool: iBooks Author. By Harrison Weber for TheNextWeb. As he puts, Apple users - which are many in education, Apple's historical core segment - won't be surprised: "The app actually feels like I’ve used it before". But he also balances that by saying that "it’s easier than ever to create for iBooks, but everything is so customizable that it seems like a professional layout design may still be necessary." He also wonders about the target audience as the App was introduced as the authoring tool for TextBooks for iPads but clearly as a broader purpose: "Shorter books, in fact any sort of book other than a giant textbook, may be a better candidate for this app, which is why it’s interesting that Apple has focused so much on textbooks instead of every type of book." Might be a good time to wake up the writer in all of us? (If you haven't seen it yet, don't miss the beautiful TextBook introduction video by Apple) 
Churchill used to say: “In England, everything is permitted, except that which is forbidden. In Germany, everything is forbidden, except that which is permitted. In France, everything is permitted even that which is forbidden. In the USSR, everything is forbidden, even that which is permitted.” DMCA is England; the Movie Industry thinks it’s France and wants us to be in Germany but this could end up in the USSR. More on why this matters for curators on the Scoop.it blog. Join the debate and make your voice heard! 
"Social ghosts are the shimmering images of potential customers. What to do - right - with social apparitions?" This post captures two interesting ideas: 1. Social Media is this great opportunity with lots of potential customers. But it also both feels reachable while hard to grasp. Like catching a ghost, right? 2. The solution can not be in automating the process, which is a challenge for some taylorism-built large corporations. Interesting to read. By Ross Quintana and curated by Saul Fleischman. 
Lisa Jardine explains that the fear of "information overload" was even present before the printing press : "..Even before the invention of the printing press - when the distribution of information depended upon teams of scribes working with pen and ink in monastery libraries -the fear of too much to know, too much material too widely and swiftly disseminated, was already threatening to overwhelm our orderly sense of understanding." Curation is defined as the "topic of 2012". But it's actually very interesting to remember that this activity is as instinctive ( and old) as the transmission of knowledge in itself. And crucial to keep access to it years after years : "there has never been a time when mastering the sum of human knowledge has not been felt to be an impossible task.And historically there was the additional fear that the precious store of knowledge accumulating as the world grew in wisdom might be lost by natural or man-made disaster." The internet seems to be less vulnerable than paper and printed sources to face natural damage and keep information accessible, always available, as you cannot "loose" it. Just google it. But the question isn't anymore to be scared to loose the information. But how to find the right one and help people to understand it as much as possible : "The danger today is rather that we are reluctant to let go of any information garnered from however recondite a source. Every historian knows that no narrative will be intelligible to a reader if it includes all the detail the author amassed in the course of their research. A clear thread has to be teased from the mass of available evidence, to focus, direct and ultimately give meaning to what has been assembled for analysis" Curation will not be a hot topic of 2012. It's a necessity to build a bright future : The curators who will help to contextualize and facilitate access to this huge amount of information will be the ones transmitting knowledge. |
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