Curation Revolution

Giuseppe Mauriello: This is my “scoop” article for today. I found this article written by Suw Charman-Anderson in November of 2006 from her first professional blog “Strange Attractor”,  now permanently moved to charman-anderson.com.

Suw is journalist, social technologist consultant and writer, one of the UK’s social media pioneers. 

Returning to her article... the author describes the scenario of the digital industry at the time (2006), then she raises some interesting  points about the need of content curation and the importance of the curator role. Here are some gems excerpted from it:

“We already have more movies available than any one person can watch; more videos on YouTube; more blogs… more everything. It’s not like we’re starting from a point of scarcity here. And the flood of stuff is going to turn into a rampaging torrent as more people get online and more people get excited by their ability to participate and create.

In the past, the media acted as gatekeepers.

They were the ones that went to the movie previews…
They were the ones who got the advance copy of the game…
They were the arbiters of taste, the people in the know, the ones with the connections needed to get at culture before us plebs got at it.

But we don’t need gatekeepers anymore. We don’t need people who stand between us and our stuff, deciding what to tell us about and what to ignore. We don’t need arbiters of taste.

We do, however, still need help. There’s just too much stuff around for us to know what’s out there, to keep up with what’s good, what works for us, what is worth investigation. What we need are curators.

We need people who can gather together the things that are of interest to us, things that fit with our tastes or challenge us in interesting ways, things that enrich our lives and help us enjoy our time rather than waste it on searching.

Curators already exist. Some are people: Bloggers who sift through tonnes of stuff in order to highlight what they like, and who, if you have the same taste as them, can be invaluable to discovering new things to like.

But curation of the web has barely started. Much of what you could call curation that exists today is flawed: too many noisy opinions and not enough capacity to understand what I as an individual want…”

I loved this article and title that the author chose for it.

Read the original article here:
http://strange.corante.com/2006/11/08/the-democratisation-of-everything-and-the-curators-who-will-save-our-collective-ass

***** Yes when gatekeepers like editors attempt to continue the market removes that power. Could argue that curation could have saved the newspaper business, but hard to be a curator if you are used to gatekeeping (apparently). Marty

8.21.14
With 1,387 views, more than 2x the next closest Scoop, The debate about Scoop.it links on Twitter is the most viewed and shared Curation Revolution Scoop of all time.

Dr. V

I’m seeing more Scoopit links in my Twitter stream and I’m not crazy about it.  Sure it’s quick and easy to share with Scoopit.  But it not quick and easy to consume. For me it's all about the econ...

Marty Note (here is comment I wrote on Dr. V's blog)

Appreciate Bryan’s and Joseph’s comment, but I rarely use Scoop.it as a pass through. More than 90% of the time I’m adding “rich snippets” to content I Scoop.

Rich snippets are “blog” posts that fall between Twitter and the 500 to 1,000 words I would write in Scenttrail Marketing. I often create original content ON Scoop.it because whatever I’m writing falls in the crack between Twitter’s micro blog and what I think of as needing to be on my marketing blog.

I was taught NOT to pass through links on Scoop.it early on by the great curator @Robin Good . Robin has well over 1M views on Scoop.it now and his advice along with the patient advice of other great Scoop.it curators has my profile slouching toward 150,000 views.

Bryan is correct that some curators new to Scoop.it haven’t learned the Robin Good lesson yet. I agree it is frustrating to go to a link and not receive anything of value back, to simply need to click on another link. Curators who pass through links won’t scale, so the Darwinian impact will be they will learn to add value or die out.

For my part I always identify my Scoop.it links, probably about half the content I Tweet and about a quarter of my G+ shares. I also routinely share my favorite “Scoopiteers”, great content curators who taught me valuable lessons such as don’t simply pass through links but add “micro blogging” value via rich snippets.

When you follow or consistently share content from a great curator on Scooop.it you begin to understand HOW they shape the subjects they curate. I know, for example, Robin Good is amazing on new tools. Scoop.it anticipated this learning and built in a feature where I can suggest something to Robin.

This is when Scoop.it is at its most crowdsourcing best because I now have an army of curators who know I like to comment on and share content about design or BI or startups and they (other Scoopiteers) keep an eye out for me. There are several reasons Scoop.it is a “get more with less effort” tool and this crowdsourcing my curation is high on the list.

So, sorry you are sad to see Scoop.it links and understand your frustration. You’ve correctly identified the problem too – some curators don’t know how to use the tool yet. I know it is a lot to ask to wait for the Darwinian learning that will take place over generations, but Scoop.it and the web have “generations” that have the half life of a gnat so trust that the richness of the Scoop.it community will win in the end and “the end” won’t take long.

To my fellow Scoop.it curators we owe Bryan and Joseph thanks for reminding us of what Robin Good taught me – add value or your Scoop.it won’t scale. That lessons is applicable to much more than how we use Scoop.it.

Marty

Added to G+ too
https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/TUsNtsAsjWp