Content Curation World

Videry is a great example of video curation at work.

Videry is a hand-curated collection of over 30 great video clips for web designers.

The beauty and value of this collection, in the context of curation is in the following:

• The quality of the clips selected
  
  
• A clean, and simple layout - content over looks
  The essence is in the selection made and that's why it needs to stand out.
  
  
• The essential info is upfront - video thumbnails + title + description
  no other distractions.
  
  
• A Pinterest-like simmetrical visual layout that allows easy scanning of the page

Where it could do better:

• Titles: no personalization for context - titles in the collection are exactly as the originals - the curator here could have improved and contextuaized titles for this collection, while keeping a good reference, visible to everyone, of the original one.
  
  
• Descriptions: these are the original video descriptions. No additions, no opinion, no contextualization. The curator could have written his own descriptions from these in the context of this collection, while leaving the original descriptions as an extra option (since they are all already accessible under the original video location).
  
  
• No visibile authorship for the collection.

P.S.: I think this clean design used in this collection is so effective that I wish there was a service prividing the ability to create curated video collections with such information design elegance.

(Anyone know who is behind Videry.me?)

Free to see.

Check it out now: http://www.videry.me/index.php

Facebook stream: https://www.facebook.com/videry.me 

Google+ stream: https://plus.google.com/106097967197719138860/posts

Listal is a free web service and a vibrant community of movies and book lovers, who are provided with the tools to collect, rate and comment their favorite films and readings.

Key features include:

• Rate items and add reviews, tags, images, videos & lists
• Create as many collections as you like
• Search and find titles by author,
• Find people who share your tastes on the basis of your ratings
• Generate charts based on the ratings of the people you follow
  
• Organise your Movie/TV, Music, Game or Book collections
• Customize your profile
• RSS feeds for lists
• Create drag and drop reorderable lists
• Annotate your lists with notes and images
• Import and export list data
• Track loaned items
• Create flash widgets for your lists and collections
• Private message other Listal members
• Discussion forums
• View statistics about your collections

My comment: Excellent free tool to curate your favorite videos, films, books, music or electronic games. Recommended for anyone serious about creating and sharing this type of information.

Free to use.

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

Flipboard, as you probably already know, is a great app (available on iOS and Android) which not only allows you to read and keep yourself updated on your favorite topics in a fresh and highly visual experience, but, since recently, it also offers you the ability to become a "curator" of whatever topic you are into.

Your job is simply to pick great stuff you stumble upon and to save it into the appropriate magazine you have created. It's not conceptually much different than clicking a Facebook "like" button and adding your comment, but we the added option of generating in the meanwhile a beautifully laid out digital magazine.

The secret here, to do something that it is of some value, it is to choose on a very specific "theme/topic" and to get picky about what you choose to publish in your magazine(s).

In this useful article Sue Waters collects and curates some of the best tips, video tutorials and techniques to make the best of your Flipboard curation experience in a step-by-step guide.

Useful. Resourceful. Media-rich. 8/10

Full guide: http://theedublogger.com/2013/06/12/flipboard/

Etceter is a new content curation tool which allows you to create and arrange information pages on any topic, by bringing and organizing together web site links, video clips, images and/or original texts.

Ay curated information page, containing as many media elements as you need, is called a Pill. You can group and assign different Pills (which are by themselves collections) to broader categories you define and which are called Boxes.

On Pills pages you have the option to organize contents into one, two or three columns and you can easily re-arrange items by simply dragging and dropping them into new positions.

Etceter Pills and individual media items can be easily shared on social media networks and are directly integrated with Facebook comments under each page.

Etceter also provides intelligible SEO-friendly URLs and personal profile pages, all relevant traits of a good curation tool.

My comment: Though Etceter looks still in early development (FAQ and other pages are still in Spanish + the Clipboard import feature does not work yet - no bookmarklet) the features and curation approach offered is interesting. In particular the nesting of media items into Pills and Boxes is quite valuable and the possibility to arrange individual items in any way desired is very useful. Video collections work particularly well as well as multimedia info pages on specific topics.

Free to use.

More info: http://www.etceter.com/en/

Promo video: http://vimeo.com/64688269

If you are interested in taking curation onboard in your learning or teaching program, here is a collection of the best web curation tools and services specifically designed for the education world.

Whether you need to pull together a collection of relevant books and reading resources for your next class, or want to push your students to collaborate on creating relevant information collections on specific topics, here are over the best tools that can be used for this task.

*Curation Tools for Education and Learning* Pinterest board: http://pinterest.com/robingood/curation-tools-for-education-and-learning/

P.S.: Please, feel free to suggest new and additional relevant tools that should be added to this collection in the comments here below.

If you are looking for visual content, diagrams and infographics that can help you introduce the concept of "content curation" to your top management, customers or students here is a free resource that you can use right away.

Over the last two years I have been collecting all of the relevant visual materials that I deemed useful to serve this very purpose: introducing the ideas and concepts behind content curation to those who know nothing about it.

It's now time to share it.

You can find this visual collection here: http://pinterest.com/robingood/content-curation-visualized/

If you are into creating curated collections of websites or web tools you may have been frustrated with Pinterest limited toolset when it comes to clipping not just images present on a web page, but whole web pages that represent a website, a tool or a service.

To create such collections you need to leverage some third-party service that allows you to easily take screenshots of websites and post them to your Pinterest boards without making your life too complicated.

Here's three tools I highly recommend:

1) http://www.snapito.com

Great web-based free tool allows you to grab a full web page screenshot or just a part of it (including time-stamped shots if desired), and to post it to Pinterest or to download it immediately to your computer.

2) http://pinstamatic.com/#website

From the same guys who created Snapito a great free tool to integrate website screenshots, quotes, maps, tweets, dates and images with custom text on your Pinterest boards.

3) Shotpin - this is a free Google Chrome extension that allows you take a custom screenshot of any web page and then allows you to post directly to Pinterest.

For iOS users check the Pinterest Bookmarklet guide.

Enjoy your pinning.

Takeaway: Planning ahead makes social media management so much easier. A simple way to keep you on track is to develop a content and curation calendar for your social posts.

From the original article by Nicole Bremer Nash on TechRepublic:

"Debate abounds over how much time a social media manager should spend each day on social networks and content.

The issue isn’t so much a matter of drive as it is that the Internet is one big rabbit hole of information.

Even if you stay focused on things related to work, you can find yourself losing valuable time in the course of managing your online content."

If you use content curation as a content marketing strategy, learning how to work with a editorial calendar is certainly useful. In tis way you rely less on the spur and impulse of the moment and more of what is really needed by your audience, while seeing clearly the forest from the trees.

Useful. 7/10

Full article: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/social-media-in-the-enterprise/create-a-social-media-content-posting-and-curation-calendar/503

I share a lot of feelings and views with Lauren Fairbanks though I do not see things exactly the same way she does. But then again she is a content marketing specialist and I am an explorer of how curation can help us beyond business goals.

I can't but agree and applaude her when she writes: "...big issue that mass curation creates is a problem that Doug Kessler of UK content marketing firm, Velocity Partners, calls “the deluge of content marketing“.

This means that companies and individuals who create half-assed content (think: rehashing old news or someone else’s original idea just to have something to post) create a mass of garbage online that’s more difficult for potential customers and clients to sift through to find information that’s actually going to be useful for them."

Likewise when she advises to pay more attention to what is being curated: "... there aren’t any software solutions that I’ve seen that actually do a smart job of curating content.

Yeah, you can pull in a bunch of content that revolves around a certain keyword ... but curating content in a smart way that will actually help drive your business goals takes putting in actual time and effort to find really great, really useful content..."

And when she begs brands and self-proclaimed curators to stop to simply copy and paste pieces of content from other magazine articles while not adding anything of their own: "Copying and pasting from multiple articles isn’t going to help you create useful content that’s going to help build your brand or sell your services.

Neither is trying to automate the content curation process so that you take all of the work out.

You get what you put in, and if you’re not willing to invest time and money into curating the right way, you shouldn’t expect to see a positive ROI from it."

Problem is, as I see it, that they might get back for a while a lot more than what they invested for, simply because there are still to many people unable to appreciate or distinguish rehashing, copying and pasting and simple republishing from true curation. But we will get there, as the taste of true lemons, isn't the one of limes.

Rightful. Provocative. 8/10

Full article: http://stuntandgimmicks.com/blog/what-is-content-curation/

(Image credit: dog covering both ears - Shutterstock)

If you look at the industry in which content curation tools and services have had the most leeway so far, that would be positively fashion, and, in my impression, by a good margin over the rapidly growing education/learning sector.

The fashion industry has embraced digital curation wholeheartedly more than any other sector so far, because of its strong visual element (the same one that has popularized the curation concept thanks to tools like Pinterest), and thanks to the natural inclination that fashion customers have for picking, collecting and sharing their unique preferences and combinations.

In this visual collection I have brought together the most interesting examples of curation at work in the world of fashion. Tools, services, communities, brands and products, all working together to filter, aggregate, pick and create relevant "selections" for the infinite number of tribes out there.

Curation Tools for Fashion: http://pinterest.com/robingood/curation-tools-for-fashion/

Enjoy, share, suggest new relevant ones to add.

OpenTopic is a news curation service which allows you to aggregate, monitor and filter any number of sources and to publish and share your selected ones to you selected outlets: from your WordPress site, to your social media channels and to your email newsletter engine.

Within OpenTopic you can create one or more "Topic" dashboards. These are essentially display pages that aggregate incoming fresh content from the sources you specify.  You can jump from one Topic dashboard to the next at the click of your mouse.

To curate stories you simpy select the ones that are relevant to your audience and you are provided with an editing module to modify and personalize the story content. At this point you can also select on which one of your outlets (Channels) that story will be published and you can customize the story differently for each one of them.

There is even an option that allows you to set-up some form of automated curation, by giving you the option to set up a set of simple rules, which when match, will trigger the publishing of a news story.

OpenTopic allows you to hook up to an extended number of possible Channels, making it easy for you to post from one location to your web site, RSS feed, social media and newsletter.

Last but not least, OpenTopic integrates a full analytics service, capable of reporting and showcasing the performance of your curation work across stories and distribution channels.

My comment: Excellent tool for social media and community managers, as well as web marketing specialists in need to support effectively the finding of relevant news on a topic and the easy publishing to different channels from a centralized platform. Easy to use.

Request an invite here: http://www.opentopic.com/

From the original article by Justin Reich and Beth Holland on MindShift: "What would a math class look like where students learn to compute, prove, derive, and intuit, as well as to discern and appreciate mathematical beauty?

What about a history class where students maintained a portfolio of beautiful artifacts and ideas from multiple periods?

How might efforts to curate benefit from the portability and ubiquity of mobile devices?

What would a “relevance portfolio” look like, where students catalog their daily encounters with ideas or experiences? What other kinds of portfolios could students create over the course of their academic career?"

If you are curious to get a glimpse at how tablets and their apps can be utilized to leverage curation for your classroom learning objectives, then this is definitely a good read.

You get a good introduction with some interesting historical facts about curation and about what it could be done with it in the real of education, and then you are provided with a good number of examples and tools that you can start to use right away.

Informative. Resourceful. 8/10

Full article: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/06/to-get-the-best-out-of-tablets-for-education-classrooms-use-smart-curation/

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

If you were looking for a way to create a Pinterest-like board, that can integrate web sites, images, video clips and files, and that you can embed within your content, like this, then you should give a good look to LookBooks.

LookBooks is a web service which allows you to curate embeddable visual information boards in which you can organize all content types.

A LookBook looks somewhat like a Pinterest board in which you can manually arrange individual tiles and integrate multiple types of information items, alongside your notes and comments to tell a story or to contextualize the different items presented.

LookBooks can be easily shared, published on the LookBookHQ web site or embedded on any site or blog and can be easily measured in terms of traffic and usage analytics.

Free 30-day trial.

Paid plans (targeted at enterprise customers): $250-2500/mo

My comment: There is a long-standing and growing need for a curation tool, that while extending Pinterest style visual collection abilities provided the ability to manually arrange board items, to include information objects beyond simple images and to be embedded on any web site or blog.

LookBooks fulfills therefore a growing need that Pinterest may not be interested in leveraging yet. Unfortunately LookBooks has chosen a pricing strategy and free-trial strategy (someone has to contact you to get you in) that cuts it out of getting any early traction through early adopters and, as a consequence, I think it may remain a model for other newcomers to exploit more than a useful tool that I can recommend you to take on your toolkit right away.

Interesting nonetheless.

More info: http://lookbookhq.com

LookBook example integrated in an article: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/06/essential-content-templates-checklists/

Other LookBook examples: http://lookbookhq.com/content/#section=example

http://lookbookhq.com/content/gallery/

Kurator is a web service which allows you to easily customize one or more visual magazines that automatically aggregate the hashtags, lists, Twitter users, Facebook pages and RSS feeds you specify.

Specifically, you can aggregate from the following sources:

• Twitter User
• Twitter List
• Twitter Keywords
• Twitter Hastags
• Twitter Mentions
• Twitter Top Followers
• Facebook Page
• Facebook Keywords
• RSS Feed

You can also filter and specify specific keywords that you want to be included/excluded.

Kurators offers the ability to title each stream, and to customize somewhat the look of the final magazine by providing a few templates and layouts and access to the controls to adjust the font style, size and color.

The final stream can be published as a web page on Kurator or exported directly to WordPress as a "page".

My comments: Kurator is a useful tool to rapidly aggregate and publish one or more streams on a specific topic and to be able to integrate this content stream into their WordPress sites.

Unless you are a graphic designer or a tech person it is hard to customize and improve on the ready-made look presently available.

Kurator offers no option to manually curate your final stream and it is almost inevitable with this approach to get some duplicate items and some outright spam.

Good for anyone needing to rapidly create one or more rich-content pages on one or more specific topics.

The difficult, curation work here is all in setting up effective filters to aggregate the valuable content you are looking for. Easier said than done.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://kuratur.com/

FAQ: http://www.kuratur.com/faqs/

My test page: http://kuratur.com/RobinGood/content-curation-news.html