Content Curation World

"Wonder was built to bring human-centric guidance back to the pursuit of knowledge on the web."

in other words: "Away from algorithmically sorted lists of links, and back to human-guided curation, evaluation and advice for those who don't need just a store address on a map".

Wonder is a new free web service which touts to be your online personal research assistant. Behind its minimalist website there's a crew of human beings that actually goes out to gather and bring back to you valuable answers and resources to your questions.

How does it work?

You just register via FB, Twitter or with your own email and then you are presented with a very simple screen in which you are asked "what are you wondering"?

You type in a question, and within a very reasonable amount of time (in my cases, in always less than 30 minutes) you receive a hand written email answer by a person with a first and last name. Not only. The person provides you also with multiple links to relevant resources that can help you find out and discover more about the topic of your interest.
 

Why it's relevant: Independently of the quality of the results that Wonder may initially bring to you, this new service highlights a growing trend toward trusted guides, expert curators of information, and their human voice and away from algorithmically sorted list of results like Google offers.

P.S.: In my initial tests a reply for a very specific question in one of my areas of expertise didn't bring back particularly valuable or useful suggestions as this knowledge would require an expert in the field, but less specialistic questions brought back useful responses written in a very human-style and supported by very high-quality relevant links and resources.

Here is one such question - answer as an example for you:

My Research Request:
How can I trust the answers provided by those behind Wonder if I know nothing about who they are?

Mike Smith reply:
Let me assure you, I am no robot. The resources curated by Wonder are compiled and collated by real human beings (such as myself) who take the time to sort through the vast amount of information available on the web.

I view the task of the Wonder researcher as being rather similar to that of your local librarian. And any good librarian isn't going to tell you how to think: they will present you with what knowledge and information they have available and arrange it in such a way that you must come to your own conclusion. Do you demand the librarian's credentials? Do you peruse their degrees and certifications? No, because her/his credentials lie in the quality of the work they have laid before you. Even if you detect bias or prejudice in what has been presented to you, then the curator's task has already been accomplished: you have assessed, for yourself, the quality of the information you have encountered and have honed your critical faculties that much more.

View Research

- Content curation (i.e. Wonder) is similar to consulting a librarian for literature on a particular subject

- Content curators (e.g. librarians) have empirically improved critical thinking skills in students

- Content curators (e.g. librarians) are tasked with fostering critical thinking in the evaluation of information sources

This is the future in preview.

Try it out and see what you think of it.
 

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://wonderlib.com/ 

It is only a matter of time before trusted aggregators and human curators will become the main sources of reliable information for most people.

In fact, the January release of the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that for the first time ever, the informed public trusts more search engines - aka Google - than traditional news and media outlets. 

In other words, most people prefer to see a filtered and selected variety of news from different sources, than seeing just the stories coming out of one news publisher.

Even more interesting is the fact that "Seventy-two percent trust information posted by friends and family on social media, blogs and other digital sites, while 70 percent trust content posted by academic experts." as it highlights the fact that Google and search engines may be only an intermediary step in the journey toward a news ecosystem that will see trusted human editors, experts and curators for individual subjects who aggregate and curate content from multiple sources as the key reference points for news.

This is must-read data for anyone interested in seeing where the future of news and search are headed.

Enlightening data. 9/10

original article:  http://www.edelman.com/post/intellectual-property-trust-age-digital-media/ 

Matt Rosoff writes on Business Insider UK:

"A lot of people think Google Search is like a map: An objective guide to the best and most important material on the internet. It's not.

Google Search is the most important product of a very wealthy and successful for-profit company. And Google will use this product to further its own commercial ends." (Not to help people find the most relevant info to their own learning needs.)

This is an excellent article that should be read a couple of times slowly to remind oneself of Google key aspirations and limits.

In it, the author illustrates with relevant references how Google uses whatever means it has to further the interest and revenues generated by its search engine ad business (AdWords / AdSense).

It also highlights, that like any other dominant, monopoly-like company it risks of being challenged in courts around the world, and this is "what Google desperately wants to avoid. If a government body issues a formal legal ruling that Google Search is an anticompetitive monopoly that needs to be regulated, it opens the floodgates".

Meanwhile Google Search is and will be increasingly challenged by smaller but more relevant, specialist search engines, like Amazon or Yelp.

But Google, hungry by its profit-driven goals, keeps also increasing the amount of information it provides itself inside search results, versus original content and resources that are out there on the web.

In four years time Google has doubled the amount screen real estate that it uses to promote its services or ads.

All of this to say, that Google is a for-profit company and not a humanitarian endeavour built and maintained to provide a true guide to the best information available online. 

For whoever has the interest, passion and skills to search, filter and organise information this is important news. 

There's an opportunity to provide higher quality, better vetted information results than Google presently does. At least in some areas. 

If Google is too busy about serving ads and pushing its own services, there will have to be someone else who can provide to Google, or other search engines, trusted quality search results on specific subject matters. 

As for Google there is one area where it cannot really compete with talented humans: trust. 

True information curators, of the expert kind, may indeed become in great demand in the near future. And personal trust will determine which one you and I will rely on. Whether Google will exist or not.

Right to the point. Informative. 9/10

Full article: http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-is-not-a-charity-2015-3 

Lutz Finger, reports from SxSW on the topic of algorithms, curation and the future, as the skills of content creators, data analysts and code programmers are seemingly converging for the first time. 

Among others, he reports Steve Rosenbaum (founder of Magnify.net) significant own words at SxSW: "...a wise combination of human judgement enabled by algorithms will become the new king of content."

But while there are great new tools, startups and ideas leveraging the great potential of big data and human curation, there is a big, invisible danger, still looming on us.

"The danger is that any algorithm might fall prey to someone trying to influence it.

This might be the ones programming the algorithm or the users. We for instance saw governments trying to skew algorithms by introducing fake online personas (Learn more about the US government persona-management software).
 

But the biggest and realest danger lies in us.

If we believe that there is only one truth and that is the one generated by a black-box algorithm we might be deceived easily."

Informative. Resourceful. 7/10

Full article: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140320132545-6074593-the-age-of-the-algorithms-sxsw-summary 

See also: www.masternewmedia.org/future-of-search

Image: Bjoern Ognibeni - SxSW