Last week I read an interesting post by Robert Scoble about how he was happy to remotely curate the Apple iPad event. The latter part of his post really got me thinking about content curation vs. content creation.
Robert (a.k.a. Scobleizer) is one of the most prolific curators of tech content around, and it’s perfectly possible to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the tech world simply by checking his Twitter favourites. He has been creating content on his blog for years, but more recently he seems to be favouring his content curation activities, which are ramping up.
Although still fresh, the concept of the content curator is not a new one. A quick Google search reveals it’s a role that’s already generating interest on the web, even though Google itself strangely asks, “Did you mean: content creation?”
Content curators gather, organise, and distribute high-quality, relevant information in specific niche areas of interest such as marketing or technology. To a point you can already get this from social news/bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Digg, but the trouble is, the quality and reliability of info you find can be hit-and-miss. Due to their popularity, these sites are targeted by affiliate spammers and commercial sites who try to game the system in order to increase their own traffic so they can make more money.
A true content curator will have no hidden agenda, instead focusing entirely on being an always-on radar for what’s going on in their niche. In the very near future, to save us from drowning in ever-deepening information overload, we will all begin to turn towards reliable content curators like this; people we can trust to deliver quality online information better than any automated service.
One of the first ‘curated content’ sites I recall was Newslinx.com (now part of internetnews.com). Back in 1996 I remember checking this site on a regular basis for my fix of technology news. Back then I was so convinced that news aggregation like this was the way of the future, I tried to start my own similar service called linxxDemon, but that went the way of the Dodo a few months after inception.
Some questions to ponder: is content curation the natural progression from the old days of Yahoo! editors hand picking sites to include in their directory? Will the content curator become the hot new job for the next decade? Should the idea of curated content be abandoned in favour of wild, chaotic content? What effect will content curation have on traditional search?
Further reading
To create or curate? That is the Apple question
Why there will be a digital curator in your future
Why content curator is the next big social media job of the future
Why is the content curator the key emerging online editorial role of the future?
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