Content Curation World

If you are looking for a reliable, efficient and easy-to-use RSS feed reader, I do suggest that you give a look to FeedBunch, a free web-based solution that does everything you expect a good feed reader to do.

Feedbunch can easily import RSS feeds, OPML files (collections of RSS feeds), can group your favorite feeds into dedicated folders, and export all of your feed subscriptions for use in another feed reader.

For anyone in need to follow and monitor systematically a great number of sources, a RSS feed reader remains an indispensable tool. Feedbunch offers a no-friction entry to RSS feed reading and content discovery for anyone moving his first steps in this direction. 

Free to use. Requires registration.

Try it out now: https://www.feedbunch.com 

Find more alternative RSS readers here: https://content-discovery-tools.zeef.com/robin.good#block_3280_rss-news-readers 

Happy Friends is a new free tool created by Dave Winer which allows you to closely follow those Twitter accounts for which you don't want to miss a beat. 

Happy Friends makes it easy for you to add (but not to delete for now) any Twitter account you want and to easily expand it to see all of its most recent tweets. 

The result is a simple interface which lists your favorite Twitter sources and allows you to check rapidly what each one of them has posted. 

What may escape anyone not reading this, is that by clicking on any of the headlines displayed inside Happy Friends you get to see the full Twitter card display, just as it was intended to be seen on Twitter with integrated images and video. 

Happy Friends fulfils for me a true need, as with Twitter typical readers and tools (including lists) it is very difficult to track specific sources postings without doing a few click acrobatics. 

I hope that in one of the upcoming versions, the formatting of the tweets will also be improved as to make it easier for the eye to rapidly scan the information presented. The twitter grey icons on the left do to little to quiet down the noise created by all the the tweet texts and links appearing on the Happy Friends page. Vertical spacing between items and separating text from links would significantly improve legibility and rapid eye-scanning of the content.

Very useful.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://happyfriends.camp/ 

See also: http://happy.smallpict.com/2014/06/24/welcomeToHappyFriends.html 

and: http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/06/28/happy-friends-turns-twitter-mailbox-select-friends/ 

If you need to monitor and track content updates from many different web sources, while being able to manage and easily update such sets of content sources, you may want to look into dynamic OPML reading lists.

In this in-depth article, Marjolein Hoekstra explores, reports and illustrates the power of OPML files and their abilities when paired with specific tools. 

Specifically (though not in this same exact order):

• What are OPML reading lists
• OPML examples on the web
• OPML history and Dave Winer
• FeedShare OPML exchange site
• Limitations of OPML reading lists
• InoReader and dynamic OPML reading lists
• How to create RSS feeds from your own reading lists
• How to generate OPML reading lists from your RSS reader
• OPML tools and resources
• Create a Google custom search engine with an OPML file

The article is a treasure trove of useful information especially for any journalist or researcher in need to continuously and update its news discovery and monitoring abilities. 

N.B.: Organization of the content sections in this article is a bit rough, but if you are not in a rush and dig through it, you can easily make sense of it all-

Informative. Insightful. 8/10

Full article: http://cleverclogs.org/2014/05/rss-reader-inoreader-to-support-dynamic-opml-subscriptions.html

Reading time: 11'

Justin Fowler, co-founder of AudioPress, offers valuable insight into what the future of search and curation may be, by providing a relevant and sound pattern to look at: music.

He writes on TheNextWeb:

"Context is key for music, and that is where services like Songza and Beats Music are picking up tips from FM radio. These services are essentially using algorithms to help people discover new playlists, instead of discovering new songs. This allows for a marriage of both technology and human curation."

Accordingly, as time goes by, I expect to see search engines increasingly highlight and direct searchers to quality curators, hubs and on-topic collections and specialized resources, rather than to individual, one-topic-only pages.

Search engines will increasingly be gateways to curators and content collections rather than to individual tracks and pages.

This will be particularly true especially when you will query a topic, a theme or interest, or better yet, a musical genre.

In all of these situations, where you want to dive, discover and learn more about a topic, it is much better to be offered a selection of playlists, compilations, collections or hubs covering that theme rather than a specific song, product or artist.

That is, search and discoverability of content will rely more and more on intermediaries that will take on the load to make sense and organize in the best possible way, a specific realm of information (it can be a music genre, or the analysis of a biological topic) rather than  - as it happens today - provide a linear list of individual web pages that is supposed to cover that topic.

If the music industry, is, like other times before, an early indicator of how things will work out in the future, it makes a lot of sense to expect that the future of content discovery and search will be increasingly in the hands of curators, greatly helped and supported by sophisticated, but hackable and adjustable algorithms.

What do you think?

Rightful. Indicative of things to come. 8/10

Full article: http://trove.com/me/content/Cc1qT

Reading time: 4':20"

BuzzSumo is a powerful web app which allows content curators to find trending top content highlighted by social media shares and key influencers on any subject you specify.

Content can be filtered by "type" (including articles, guest posts, infographics, videos and interviews) and by *time" with the ability to see just the last 24 hours, the past week, month or six months of data.

Influencers can be filtered by bloggers, journalists, influencers, companies and regular people. 

An excellent tool for curators to find valuable new content and key contacts, influencers or prospective customers on any subject.

Free to use and test even without signing up.

.

Try it out now: 

• http://app.buzzsumo.com/top-content 
• http://app.buzzsumo.com/influencers 

Pugmarks is a Chrome web extension which allows you to get in-context references and complementary reading suggestions to any web page you are viewing.

Pugmarks leverages your network of Twitter, LinkedIN and an optional set of RSS feeds (which you must provide in OPML format) to filter and select the most relevant reading resources that it will suggest to you.

When you are on any web page you can click the Pugmarks footprint icon on the Chrome browser extension bar and a strip of relevant information is displayed over the top (or bottom) of your screen.

The extension can be paused and the user has the option to select whether to see the Pugmarks bar appear on top or on the bottom of his browser screen.

When you open a new empty tab Pugmarks suggests relevant content items to check out. 

My comment: Useful to find additional, relevant content resources just-in-time, as you browse. 

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://pugmarks.me/ 

Intro video: http://youtu.be/v4rGEu0hsGQ +

http://youtu.be/tfR1xIRNIoo 

more info: https://pugmarks.me/pugmarklet 

If your Google Alerts is not working as it used to be and you are getting only a notification every once in a while, you not alone. In fact rumours say that Google Alerts may be dismissed soon and that its service is not actively maintained since quite a while.

Enter TalkWalker Alerts, a Google Alerts clone that replicates almost faithfully the Google tool original layout, UI and features.

If you are not familiar with this kind of tool, its key purpose is one of actively and persistently search for a set of keywords you specify and to report to you, via RSS/email of any instances of new content mentioning your selected keywords.

You can specify within what type of content these keywords need to be found (discussions, news, blogs, everything), in which language sites they appear, and how often and how many of the results found should be sent to you.

If you have used Google Alerts you will find yourself at home instantly, with the added ability to import your old set of alerts from Google. (Just login in your Google Alerts account, click on Export under your list of alerts, and then when you are in TalkWalkerAlerts click on Import. Voilà all your Google Alerts now work also here.)

As in Google you get both a RSS feed for each query / alert, as well as the possibility to receive email alerts as things happen or in a daily or weekly digest.

This is an excellent replacement for Google Alerts. Easy. Intuitive. Essential.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://www.talkwalker.com/alerts