“Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content.”
-Rishad Tobaccowala
This quote is bouncing around today thanks to the WSJ. I think it makes a lot of sense and wonder if this thinking can help end the land rush around curation and the desire to be a “super curator”.
My genuine feeling is that, at this point, we have too many curators. If any major event happens (especially in the tech space) my social streams are now flooded with the same information and links over and over to the point of nausea. Everyone wants to share, I can appreciate that. People are also gunning for that coveted “first to post” status. This makes a little less sense to me, but is also understandable. As we build larger audiences across social networks we look for more and more ways to delight and entertain those audiences.
For the consumer, however, over-curation can be a really bad thing. A web service wins when it can distill a topic of interest (or many topics) into its purest form. Google has done this with search, for example. A contrasting example, on the other hand, would be Twitter. For both general feed consumption and search on Twitter, well, it’s a real mess. I’m sure we have all had that feeling of “OK, yes I get it, I’ve seen that headline 500 times now” when a major news cycle is making the rounds. I know I have, and with increased frequency of late.
Of course being in the tech space makes one more susceptible to over-curation, but I see the same patterns outside of tech. It’s also happening on platforms other than Twitter. Yes, even normal people are over-curating the web. From moms to mom and pop brands, everyone is resharing and it can be downright annoying.
It’s probably a good time for some more lessons on how to be a good curator before things get really out of hand.
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September 8th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Robbie Coleman re-shared this
September 8th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
I tend to agree with you that we are being inundated with topical events/news by over-sharing. I find sharing helpful in smaller, localized areas, like my hometown or state. Just yesterday I read several of the same headlines that alerted me to closed roads & schools that were important to me, but retained no value for my fellow webbers.
I think we do need to teach curator etiquette, but I think we should start with larger media outlets, like, say, cable news networks. Honestly, the amount of time dedicated to every angle of some stories is just exhausting and in some cases, like 9/11, hard for some people to process. Too much info is bad too.
I wish someone would hand out a rules book. I know I hate being ‘that person’ who shares everything, whether I am trying to be supportive or informative.
My friend and I just joked about older people having to use email if the Post Office closes for good. All the jokes from 1992 will start circulating again. After all, it’s new to them ….
September 8th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Is it curation, though, just passing links around?
To me, curation involves a degree of filtering, making sense of the topic, inserting it in a broader context, drilling down on aspects of it, etc. By this definition, my take is that we don’t have enough curation – diversity of ideas, bouncing off data and adding informed thought… we do have enough shooting from the hip opinion, one liners, look at me photo opp grandstanding gestures.
What we could use more of is thoughtful discourse.
September 8th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
I must say I agree with Valeria in that the things pointed out in this post are just pointing to content, not curating content.
I would also further point out that curation usually involves searching for valuable content, and in case of breaking news there seems to be very little discovery involved either.
September 8th, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Lots of people are doing very poor curating. Being first to post and posting everything you see is curation done poorly. Curating requires selecting the best of the content. To do that you have to wait until you see the choices and pick one. It seems that their audience wants it fast and furious, because it gives them the chance to reshare it and build their own audience.
Beyond curating comes punditry. Adding your own assessment of the content. That’s much harder to do. First, you have to have an opinion, which many people don’t. Then you have to take the time to create a coherent response to the content. Finally, you can be scored on your responses. Some people won’t like your opinion and your predictions may turn out to be wrong. It’s easier to curate.
I’d rather see more pundits. People who ad value to the content instead of just posting it as fast as they can.
September 8th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Good thoughts Daryll. Thank you, Ville.
What about the pundits who are already doing that? I’m tend to share those posts and articles – I also wait and process information before posting, sometimes taking several days to research… if that’s indeed what we want to encourage, I say read, share, and comment on *those* sites. I know it sounds simple.
September 9th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
I don’t think it’s curation that’s the problem, I just don’t think people know what it is or how to do it. Tweeting your favorite Mashable link is like curating Katie Perry songs on 102.7. It’s not curation, it’s “me too” linking that is somehow supposed to demonstrate your taste. It’s lazy, uninformed and completely lacks any value.
Real world curation, done by museum curators, requires an extensive knowledge of specialized domain, making you an expert at being able to identify representative pieces that tell the important stories of an epoch of time. There are very few people who are doing the web equivalent, and most of them are not talking about curation.
For me, web curators are people like Liz Danzico, Jason Kottke, Tim Carmody, Doc Searls (w/r/t public radio) Robin Sloan, maybe even Frank Gruber, etc. The list is short, and most of these people (save Jason, and maybe Robin) are specialists in a very particular niche, and have the ability to tease out the important themes of their area of expertise.
They also happen to be incredible contributors and great thinkers as well, showing that curation is often just one dimension of expertise, something else that’s missed in all of the current “curation vs. creation” talk. It’s not zero sum, by any stretch.
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