information analyst

Robin Good: John McCarus, SVP for Brand Content at Digitas, ignites an interesting panel about content creation vs content curation.

This is the second in a series of three videos highlighting a 2012 conversation on the future of media on the social web organized by Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint.

The nicely edited video, brings up in its four minutes, some valuable takes and opinions on how curation is perceived, used and modulated to achieve different results and objectives.

From mere republishing and copying of someone else materials without attribution or credit (certainly not something to be categorized under "curation") to the new cadre of emerging journalists, who not only write, but also monitor, research, pre-digest and cull the most interesting content - not written by them - for their own audiences.

Key takeaways:

“A curator is an editor, essentially. You become a trusted source by doing the hard work for your audience and telling them what’s important, whether you’ve written it or not.

Traditionally that’s been the role of great newspapers; now that function is being spread across the web.”
Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch

-> Publishers have a love / hate relationship with curators.

-> Curators help to expand a publisher’s reach, but the publisher risks losing credit (and traffic).

-> Curators who link back and republish only enough to pique interest will keep publishers happy.

“It’s like the forest episode of Planet Earth: the animal eats the nectar and sort of destroys the plant but spreads the pollen all over.”

Jason Hirschhorn, Media ReDEFined

Interesting. 7/10

Original video: http://vimeo.com/37553245 

Full article: http://digitalquarters.net/2012/02/video-rebooting-media-think-tank-content-creation-vs-curation/ 

Robin Good: A great video animation introducing some of the key ideas, dreams and concepts behind content curation.

From the video: "One of the most beautiful things about the Internet is this sort of radical discovery, where you start in a place that you are familiar with, that you trust, and then you drill down and down and chase the white rabbit and then you end up in some wonderland you didn't know existed." 

The clip includes thoughts from some unique curators, picked and selected by Percolate, the company sponsoring this video. 

Inspiring. Insightful. 8/10

Find out more / watch original video: http://vimeo.com/38524181   ;

In this video, natural language processing expert Russell Wright from Theme Zoom explains the difference between premium curation for corporations and curation for small businesses.

There is some very good information for small businesses.

Here are a few things Russell talks about:

He suggests tools for aggregating information, (he mentions Curata a lot for corporations and he has a relationship with them and it almost seems like he's plugging them a lot, but stick with it, you might find one or two things that will help you along the way).

Here are a few things he talks about:

**how to have the right site architecture for good SEO

**adding context, how to use curation to show your expertise using the monitization model, he explains this in more detail.

**Provide a better valued insight or create a new conversation, give your opinion on the content you're curating, find a  creative way to add meaning without going overboard.

**You have to be clear about what service you're providing, reduce your topics and themes by only having 4 or 5 keywords so you are continually providing valuable information to your audience.

**Don't be too broad, match your topic with your brand message.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV--va4x2n0