Content Curation World

I recently wrote about the Oriella survey of journalists that found that most do not use social media or blogs for verifying and sourcing stories.

We’re flooded with more and more information every day. There are more blogs to read, more people to follow, more research papers to digest, than ever before. Our response to this tidal wave of data has been to turn to aggregators and curators, people and organizations that can filter, interpret, highlight, or suppress selected parts of the data wave for us so that we can get something useful out of it.

Aggregation and curation done well can bring the right stuff to our attention and in the process make the aggregators powerful entities in their own rights. Mashable, Techcrunch, Slashdot, Lifehacker, and many others are examples of this; even my own little summary of #the5 in the mornings is an example of aggregation and curation that builds reputation.

From the moment a consumer becomes acquainted with a brand, he or she is gathering information on it. This type of information can range from whether or not a need has been satisfied by the brand to getting the best “bang for their buck”. As a result, consumers have the power to reinforce, modify or destroy an organization’s brand image quickly.

An assessment of the two perspectives is necessary for content marketers to identify the “brand image” gaps between the two entities. Any identified gaps should be highlighted and content should be curated to address the issue to close the gap in order for the two perceptions to be aligned.

For some time, Facebook has been interested in semantic search — using its social graph and immense amount of information about its users to deliver search results. Some have dismissed the effort, but that’s premature and doesn’t take into account what Facebook could do with a new hybrid: automatically curated search.

A patent granted last month to Facebook describes an approach to search that combines any type of search engine results with the popularity of each result among members of a user’s social network.

Although some thought the patent was on photo tags, it isn’t. The implications are actually quite broad and could affect conventional search; specialty interest search topics like travel; publishing; and e-commerce; just to name a few.

Collect the most interesting video clips and create a channel with them. A clever way to collect and manage video.

Assembling stories or lists based on links to existing information to add value to what’s already out there has become a valued skill for writers and editors.

The Pew Research Center‘s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a study showing that while news sites depend a great deal on Google’s twin engines of search and news, which drives approximately 30% of these sites’ traffic, there’s another major source at work. Facebook and Twitter drive some traffic. But the surprising source of referrals comes from a single site — the Drudge Report, a 14-year-old site founded by Matt Drudge and most notorious for its coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The Drudge Report alone drives about 7% of traffic to news sites. Facebook follows, providing about 3.3%, with Twitter next driving about 1%. (The bulk of traffic — about 40% — comes from direct URL access, typing in a domain name or using a bookmark.)

While it’s arguable whether Google’s news and search algorithms rise to the level of curation, it’s notable that the Drudge Report, which is curated by real people, has such an effect on traffic. As David Carr of the New York Times writes:

If you at all depend on the Internet for news, social trends, or innovation ideas in business, projects or fun, it is likely that someone is thinking about it, too.

Now, on to the story. We are content. We are curation. Open the doors, see all the people!