First SEO ruled. Then SMO became at least as important. But while a lot of people expect it to be as systematic, it's not something than can be done without remembering that it's fundamental underlying subject is not the Google algorithm. But the Human one.

An account of the Social Media Optimization Conference by TheNextWeb

Brian Solis is great at giving perspectives: in this post, he unifies all of the recent trends affecting the future of digital content in a single impressive post.

From a Web of Data to the Contextual Web, here's what happens when we mix alogirthms and humans and create this new Web based on "humanrithm".

"They’re no longer consumers, but stakeholders in the information economy."

Yes we can!

Interesting Guest Post by Neicole Crepeau who compares the role of curators with Google's in the way content gets accessed.

As a consequence, the end of the posts concludes that :

"If the Curator is the new Google, we can expect businesses to optimize for the Curator just as they optimized for Search on the web. In this new world, Curators become a commodity and they have value that will be sought after. Marketers will seek curators in specific topic areas and with specific traits. Marketers will want to know:

The topics this person curates. Curators specialize.
The networks and communities he/she curates to. Curators who are plugged into niche communities and forums may be even more valuable.
The number of connections on those networks. The volume or following always counts.
The types of connections the curator has. What’s the quantity of different types of social users following this curator: gamers, social butterflies, shoppers, deal seekers?
Reshare value. How many of this curator’s followers reshare the content, and how wide a net do they cast?
The click-through-rate for this curator’s content. How often do people open the items this curator shares?
The conversion rate resulting from this curator’s content. How often does a recommendation from this person generate sales? How often does a click through on a piece of content from this curator result in a sale?"

So curators... what's you conversion rate ?

Interesting interview of Tom Forenski on how every company now has to become a media:

"That's when it hit me that every company is a media company, every company has to publish to its customers, to its staff, to its communities.

Even if you make diapers you still need the skills of a media company. And in today's fragmented media world you need those skills even more than before because there is an important phenomena in media: if you establish a pole position it is very difficult for others to dislodge you.

For example, Zappos blogging in online shoe buying, have you heard of anyone else in that space? The same happens in other media sectors. People complain about the quality of Techcrunch coverage but it's in a pole position in startup coverage and so you have to live with it whether you like it or not. For companies, if they can't establish a pole position in their media space their competitors will grab it. If you are not seen online you are invisible."

One of the best talks I've attended at SxSWi. By Margot Bloomstein. Very aligned with our own vision at Scoop.it.

My key take-aways:
- Curation can not be automated. Algorithm filters fail. Margot gave brilliant examples.
- Not only do they fail but they can not create a story which is what curation is about. Curation = expression
- Topic selection is the first act of curation (now you know why we start by that on scoop.it ;-))
- Curation is subjective: otherwise it doesn't add value.

Could have been a spec for Scoop.it...

Great TED Talk by Eli Pariser on why algorithms are not curators and what dangers these filters cause when they're invisibly at work like on the above picture where 2 users have totally different results in Google for the same keyword "Egypt" at the time of the protests.

First, before the Internet, we had human gatekeepers. Then, with the Internet, they were overflown by the amount of content out there. That's what some called information overload, or what Clay Shirky calls "Filter Failure" (see: http://bit.ly/ma2dSd).

Now, a lot of companies believe in "automated curation" which to me doesn't make sense because there is more to curation than just filtering (http://bit.ly/k3T9nc). Algorithmic filtering can help and is certainly needed but it doesn't replace human curation, an old concept now turning social on the Internet.

But there's another problem with filters. As summarized on the TED site: "As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy."

Algorithms limit us to a pattern without being really accountable nor being challengeable. Who can you complain to in the above Google example?

Surprising, challenging views are what we need. Subjectivity as well. Can that really be delivered by a robot?

An interesting explanation on the role of the curators, how they are developping, and how Media brands should consider them.

Friend? Foe? Target?

This is an interesting move. I've unsurprisingly been a great advocate of using curation for discovery. Discovery unlike search remains a very tricky problem in spite of the great web tools we have now. As this article points out, the web's history been caught between two major trends : more and more content (content explosion), more and more tools to help us manage this explosion.

Now, if there are industries where discovery does really matter and where it's a very tricky subject involving your social circle, Fashion is one of them.

So this is why seeing social curation startups address the fashion business makes a lot of sense to me. Socially curated fashion catalogs might just be what we need to decide what to wear, as author Vikram Alexei Kansara concludes.

Great post by @axelletess on what she started to call Humanrithms at the last SxSW.

Ok, Axelle works for Scoop.it so I'm not totally objective but still, I like the word Humanrithm as it describes well the hybrid combination we need to build to create proper curation and filtering.

And Google is at the heart of it: built on algorithms, the company needs to embrace social media differently and I also fear - like Axelle - that +1 is not enough to bring signal back in the noise.

Although The Huffington Post does not pay those who volunteer to write blogs for it, this content represents only a small share of its traffic. And, to put it bluntly, many of those blog posts aren't worth very much.