information analyst

Robin Good: Good article by Rex Hammock on RexBlog.com highlighting the confusion arising from using the term curation when it is not really appropriate. 

 

He writes: "Somewhere along the way, the inherently-confusing metaphor of curation being applied to content on the web went from something like, finding relevant content and pointing readers to it to something like, find content on other sites and simply re-write what they say and place it on our site and that’s okay, as long as somewhere you credit the source.”

 

He has several more interesting points. here a few key excerpts from it: "While I believe “curation media” can be a helpful service to readers, the act of writing a story that rehashes another story — without adding some insight or background — is a disservice to all involved.

 

...

 

"...I’m not suggesting that the act of sharing articles you run across is anything but good. I’m not even suggesting that websites like Huffington Post or Business Insider are nothing more than re-writing services. (I’m not “suggesting” it, as it’s well known.)

 

This is the bottom line: To be of any value (or to prevent you from appearing foolish), your curation needs to be more than merely re-writing something that has already been re-written one or two times.

 

If you feel the need to do that, just link."

 

 

Rightful. 7/10

 

Full article: http://www.rexblog.com/2012/06/14/47898 ;

Via Robin Good

Robin Good: Paper.li one of the early players in the news aggregation, discovery and auto-curation space has been significantly improving its service which now offers also a $9/month Pro version.

 

Paper.li allows you to set a number of search queries on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and to import specific RSS feeds to "aggregate" the most relevant on a certain topic or theme.

 

You as a curator can "preview" your yet-to-be-published news magazine and can manually pick and decide which "stories" to publish and which ones to drop by simply hovering your mouse on anyone of them.

 

"Editions" can be auto-scheduled and Paper.li can automatically announce on Twitter and via email to your subscribers when a new one is out.

 

PRO users get to have the last word before any edition gets published, by way of a "preview before promotion" feature that lets you control when notifications go out and gives you time to make changes, can add promotional banners, standard ads or other marketing materials in a set of predefined hot spots on their news page, and can "brand" their magazine with their own banner, background image and personalized colors.

 

More info: https://paper.li/learn-more.html

 

Try it out now: https://paper.li/

 

 

 

 

Via Robin Good, Tim Pixley