Initially when people used Google to search for topics and enhance their knowledge about a certain topic it gave them a feeling of having the world in their hands and the fact that any information needed was just a click away surely gave a feeling of power and control.
Want to know about anything – Just Google It. The whole activity of search gave immense satisfaction and the discussions among peer groups gave an aura of superiority, especially, if you had shortlisted , relevant and important content which others were unable to find on Google.
But all the search activity does involve time and once the newness should I say or the glamour and curiosity behind any activity fades away the law of ‘Diminishing Marginal Utility’ starts becoming applicable and you start thinking and working out options of getting a ready list of relevant content links available to you instantly. For that RSS surely was handy at least you did not have to surf or search for links which were appreciated and already searched by you and wanted to refer to continuously. But that also has a limitation and again it gives you a feeling of a déjà vous and the curiosity to know more makes one search again to update the RSS list. That means again time spent on search . What if someone did all this for you and you got ready info. About the relevant topics with a complete updated list of links about the latest updated content, buzz and also about comments and opinions. Don’t you think that is great. Yes it is I am sure.
That is exactly what the next big evolution of the web is about ‘Content Curation’.
Content curation is about finding the most relevant content about a topic online and listing all the relevant links found on that topic after a thorough research on the web. Now the reliability and the quality of links will depend on the knowledge and sensibilities of the curator. But once people find his findings to be valuable and worth a read I am sure the blog, website or any other platform he uses to share that set of links will be surely regularly read and followed. So, content curators are basically people who do the search activity for you and present the results in the form of ‘Ready To Eat’ food packages or like instant coffee.
As a blogger too if after having a blog post you mention atleast 5 other links related to the topic then the readers would surely have additional matter to read and ready links available on your blog.
It is still uncertain as to how all this will shape up in future but all the links we share on the social media and then have newspapers published for the links tweeted by us shall surely have some impact on the search and social graph once the content curation aspect is well woven in the algos. Of the search engines and the social media searches.
But if you check out some tools which measure Twitter influence and reach and categorize the Twitter accounts like for e.g www.klout.com they have a Twitter Account Type which is known as ‘Curator’ that means that the person having that twitter account shares a lot of relevant links in his tweets.
Content creators have their own niche but curation cannot exist without creation.
Relevant Links:
http://mashable.com/2010/05/03/content-curation-creation/
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/content-curation/
http://www.contentcurationmarketing.com/articles/16751/what-is-content-curation/
