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/