Content Curation World
960.4K views | +39 today
Follow
Content Curation World
What a Content Curator Needs To Know: How, Tools, Issues and Strategy
Curated by Robin Good
Author: Robin Good   Google+
Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
Scooped by Robin Good
Scoop.it!

Curate Great-Looking Web Magazines From Mobile or Desktop with Flipboard 2

Now you can enjoy Flipboard magazines on the Web. Here's a quick tutorial about their basic features. To start browsing Web magazines, go to: https://flipboa...
Robin Good's insight:



If you want to curate a cool-looking visual magazine on a specific topic, Flipboard offers a free, and very easy-to-use solution, potentially reaching a very large audience.


The real news is that the mobile-born app, is now available also on the Web, both for creating and editing new magazines as well as for reading them on any standard browser.


Use is extremely simple and straightforward. After you have created a new magazine on the topic of your choice, you can easily a) search through Flipboard curated content and "reflip" relevant items to your magazine, or b) use a dedicated button / bookmarklet to add "on-the-fly" web articles or videos to one or more of your mags.


The trade-in for all of this simplicity is very little opportunity for editing and personalization. You can't edit the title, add your image, or format your introductory comments, nor you can decide anything about how your curated content will be laid out and presented.


It is possible to invite other users to collaborate and contribute to your own magazines and  it's easy to share what you post in Flipboard also on your preferred social media (Facebook, Twitter).


Flipboard does an excellent job of curating the hundreds of thousands of visual magazines being created by picking, organizing and surfacing the best and most interesting ones. This approach provides a very effective solution to filtering out shallow, superficial and spammy content, in favor of truly memorable visual collections of pointers to great content.



My comment: Content curation on Flipboard is a 4-step process that even non-technical people can understand quite easily.


Flipboard it's as easy and simple to use as Pinterest. You find an interesting an article on a topic you cover? You tap the "+" button (on your smartphone) or click the "Flip it" button (desktop), you select an image, add a comment, pick in which magazine of yours to place it and you're done. 


Flipboard is a powerful tool because it makes it extremely easy to pick content and repackage it into a stunningly beautiful visual magazine that can be read and edited across any type of device.


The skills and ability of the Flipboard internal curation team makes all of the difference in making Flipboard a unique "open" source of high-quality curated content, organized by topics, presented in a stunning visual format. In this respect Flipboard is a significant step ahead of its direct competitors. That is, if you are looking for a quality source of content curated by users, Flipboard has something of value to provide.


Excellent solution for anyone who has an interest in curating a very elegant looking web visual magazine without having to learn anything new.


Limiting for anyone in need to have more control over sources management, content editing and personalization, distribution and white labelling options.



Free to use.


Find out more: https://flipboard.com/


Flipboard for Android


Flipboard for iOS


Web bookmarklet: https://share.flipboard.com/

with this bookmarklet installed on your browser you can use any Mac or PC to add new content, comments to your Flipboard-based visual magazines.


Flipboard magazine examples: https://flipboard.com/community/


FAQ: https://flipboard.com/support/


Video tutorials: https://flipboard.com/community/#test

P.S.: Even if you intend to use Flipboard from the web, you need a tablet or smartphone to sign-up and register for the service.







trendspotter's comment, August 9, 2013 9:42 AM
Since Flipboard launched on the web the audience of my Flipboard magazine ( http://flip.it/7dXbs ) has grown from 1000 people to 8000 people. So for me this was a huge shift.
Robin Good's comment, August 9, 2013 10:00 AM
Thank you Trendspotter for sharing this valuable info. Much appreciated indeed.
trendspotter's comment, August 14, 2013 12:00 PM
To be fair. First the CEO of Flipboard had added my Future magazine to his personal list of his favorite magazines. Then some weeks later the team at Flipboard added my magazine in their new overview of officially recommended Flipboard user magazines, where I'm still listed here (https://flipboard.com/magazines/#tech-science) that is when my readership grew to 8000 people. Now I've noticed that my magazine is also showing up in the recommended list of tech magazines in the Flipboard app, next to large media sites like Ars Technica or Giga OM or TNW. That is when I grew to 10.000 readers.

So my point is: Flipboard starting the web version was not the only effect why I got so many new readers there. Basically the reason was their promotion of my magazine, which started when they started their web version.
Scooped by Robin Good
Scoop.it!

Curate Your Personal Web Magazine with NextMags

Curate Your Personal Web Magazine with NextMags | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

Robin Good: NextMags is a new content curation platform that allows you to publish a free and well designed online web magazine on a topic of your choice.


Born out of the curated search app Searcheeze, NextMags offers the typical browser bookmarklet to clip and collect any relevant content you may find on the web, as well as the option to write your own posts / articles.


With NextMags it will soon be possible to import and integrate in your topic-specific web magazine specific content coming from Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and from other social networks.


Very similar in concept to Scoop.it and similar content curation tools, NextMags is uniquely characterized by its ease of use, good navigation options, clean and white-based look and for a very affordable and competitive pricing approach (kudos to NextMags for getting this in the right track).

Lacking instead for now from this curation platform is a set of features allowing the curator to gather and aggregate raw content coming from different sources in an effective way. While there is the possibility to use the "Suggestions" area to gather some raw content, for now this is limited to tapping only Google News, Twitter and your readers. It is possible to subscribe to other NextMags and to receive direct contet suggestions from other curators, but, as far as I have seen, there is no back-end for news discovery, aggregation and filtering, typical of such curation tools.


NextMags offers multiple service options. From a free level which allows you to create up to five web magazines, but wit the ability to elect only one other editor, import images, schedule posts, check analytics, or use alternative design themes, to a paid one, costing only €44.99 a year (!) where not only you can access all of these extra features but you can also have an unlimited number of web magazine and more than one co-editor.


More pricing info: http://www.nextmags.com/plans


N.B.: Curated article content imported from other sources CANNOT be edited. That's a "first" on this front, but I am quite doubting that this conservative approach will bear much fruits.


Tour: http://www.nextmags.com/tour


Try it out now: http://www.nextmags.com/


(Thanks to Roberto Tartaglia for suggesting it)

Stefano Passatordi's comment August 10, 2012 6:26 AM
Hi Robin,

Thanks for covering us, it’s always a pleasure to receive feedback from people like you.

I’d like to make some clarifications:

- The social clipping feature (Facebook,Twitter, Google Plus, etc) will be available after the summer;

- In the “Suggestions” area, we already have a suggestion engine based on keywords. For now, suggestions are limited to Google News, Twitter and your readers. We’re working to improve it, in order to give you an effective news discovery engine;

- A FREE user can also have one collaborator for each magazine. We decided to give this opportunity to the free user because we truly believe that collaboration is a key feature for us;

- Other important features such as: custom domain and custom layout (currently not listed in the pricing page) will be available in the next months;

- Regarding the fact that imported content cannot be edited, we think that whenever a curator decides to clip content it’s because he wants to promote it or discuss it. In both cases, he doesn’t need to modify the original content, he may want to add personal comments or images to that content and we give him the opportunity to do so. At the end, the original content plus the curator’s comments look like a new article in which everyone takes credit for its own contribution.

We’ve just launched a few days ago and we’re working very hard on improving the service to make it the best choice for a content curator. Stay tuned, there will be great new features and improvements in the near feature!

Thanks Robin!

Stefano Passatordi
CEO, NextMags
Robin Good's comment, August 13, 2012 2:22 AM
Hello Stefano, thank you so much for your kind comments and clarifications. Much appreciated indeed!
Scooped by Robin Good
Scoop.it!

Create Your Custom Web Magazine by Curating the Best Content Out There: Keemix

Create Your Custom Web Magazine by Curating the Best Content Out There: Keemix | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

Robin Good: Keemix is a web publishing service which allows anyone to create their own web magazine by easily capturing and editing content already available on the web. 


You can create multiple channels/topics covering different topics/interests, share items on social networks and have a personalized Keemix web site with your custom look.


From the official site: "Keemix allows you to gather loved content from the web, mix it into your own custom-designed pages, and share it to inspire your friends and colleagues.


Mixes can be private or public, and administrated individually or collaboratively.


Keemix is tightly integrated with all major social networks and broadcasts your content through feeds or newsletters, helping you reaching like-minded individuals."


A bookmarklet makes it easy to grab any site, article, video, image or text you may run into on the web.

By invitation only. (I don't have one yet)

More info and samples: http://keemix.com/  


(Thanks to Giuseppe Mauriello for discovering this)

No comment yet.
Scooped by Robin Good
Scoop.it!

Curate Your Own Web Magazine by Picking the Best from the Web with Zeen

Curate Your Own Web Magazine by Picking the Best from the Web with Zeen | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

Robin Good: I have just received an invitation to test the new content curation platform Zeen, and here I am with some early impressions on what I have seen.


Zeen is a content curation tool designed to create good-looking magazines on a specific topic or theme. Setup and configuration is very easy and straightforward and it allows you to connect your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.


Once you are in, you can immediately set up a Zeen magazine, by selecting a title, a description and a cover image. From there on you are free to use the integrated search feature to find web articles, news, images, video clips or tweets relevant to your magazine. You just start a search after having selected what kind of content you are looking for and Zeen presents you with a set of relevant results. One-click on any of them and they are inserted instantly in your magazine.


You can also create as many "tags" (Zeen calls them "labels") as you like and assign each content item to a specific label.


The final magazine issue offers an automatic visual table of contents, in which you can organize by dragging and dropping the order of your selected contents.


A Zeen magazine can be made of multiple issues, instead of being like Scoop.it, a continuously growing content holder. You select the content items and you produce an issue (which can be still edited after publication).


N.B.: There is no way to edit or modify the content picked and added to your magazine, including the use of images.


You can't create new content but only pick and organize existing resources.


Here is an example of a Zeen magazine: http://zeen.com/read/ODgO94/toc

and here is another one on barbeques: http://zeen.com/read/KuJoAW



More info: http://zeen.com/


Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's comment, August 16, 2012 8:58 AM
After receiving an invite yesterday and also gave it a try. They have a long way to go as far as a mobile user using the site to currate content.

In find when viewing a magazine the layout has to much going on around it that takes away from the content.
Robin Good's comment, August 16, 2012 9:02 AM
Brian, I agree with you 1000%!
Scooped by Robin Good
Scoop.it!

Publish Thematic Web Magazines By Curating The Best Stories From The Web: Storination

Publish Thematic Web Magazines By Curating The Best Stories From The Web: Storination | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

Robin Good: Storynation is a collaborative publishing platform which allows you to easily assemble and curate existing Storify stories, as well as any other type of content (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and more) into a cool-looking web magazine.


It is as if Storify had Scoopified itself, by adding to its great content curation service, a new publishing layer offering anyone the ability to create a full-fledged and great-looking web site. 


From the official site: "A Nation is an online community on any kind of topic.


It's a space where you and other people add into a storyboard social stories.


Customize your Nation like a blog by uploading a logo, and a large cover. 


What's a Storyboard ?


A storyboard is an online set of Storify stories curated by you. After opening your Nation, Storination allows you to compile into a storyboard your stories and other people's stories created in Storify.


It's very easy to organize your storyboard by adding or removing stories."


Find out more: http://storination.com/ 

No comment yet.