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What a Content Curator Needs To Know: How, Tools, Issues and Strategy
Curated by
Robin Good
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Scooped by Robin Good onto Content Curation World |
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Robin Good's insight:
Curata has just sent me a gentle email reminder of a great ebook PDF it had published two years back in 2011. Entitled "5 Steps To Becoming a Content Curation Rockstar", this 19-page booklet cleanly outlines the process and key steps a content / news curator needs to go through to create value.
Unlike long article texts on the topic, this is a well written outline, for anyone who need to get a good grasp and perspective on what the content curator truly involves.
I recommend it.
Useful. Good outline. 7/10
Free to download.
Get it here: http://info.curata.com/rs/hivefire/images/curata_rockstar.pdf
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What is content curation? We take a look at some of the pitfalls of content curation and how your brand can avoid making serious mistakes in its content marketing strategy.
Robin Good's insight:
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) 
Elisa Vimercati's comment,
June 17, 10:54 AM
The point here is, promotional material could exist, just don't tell us lies, companies: if you are giving us "bull sales marketing selling something", tell us. Like: "Here you will only find promotional material. For us is still worthy and we hope it is for you. If you want to get Real Content and Only Information, then click here"... leading us to a real, original piece of information. Anyway, Xyeye, as a journalist I receive loats of such materials that claim to be the requested description from which I should take the article so I know the sensation...
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Robin Good's insight:
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:
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/ 
Zorka Kovacevich's curator insight,
June 16, 7:51 AM
Insight From Robin Good:
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 &listsCreate as many collections as you likeSearch and find titles by author,Find people who share your tastes on the basis of your ratingsGenerate charts based on the ratings of the people you followOrganise your Movie/TV, Music, Game or Book collectionsCustomize your profileRSS feeds for listsCreate drag and drop reorderable listsAnnotate your lists with notes and imagesImport and export list dataTrack loaned itemsCreate flash widgets for your lists and collectionsPrivate message other Listal membersDiscussion forumsView 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/
juanjovilar's curator insight,
June 17, 7:22 AM
Herramienta para generar tus listas de mejores libros, canciones, discos, películas... Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
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). Useful. Resourceful. Media-rich. 8/10 Full guide: http://theedublogger.com/2013/06/12/flipboard/ 
Stephen Dale's curator insight,
June 16, 5:02 AM
Flipboard (an App available for iOS and Android) is my favourite app for consuming and sharing inrormation. Relevence is improved by being able to choose the topics you want to follow, and liking or favouriting specific articles.
The recent addition of the Flipboard Editort now enables you to create and curate your own magazine, which you can share with others, or keep simply as a place for bookmarking.
In this article, Sue Waters provides a step by step guide on how to use and make the most of the Flipboard features.
Stephen Dale's curator insight,
June 16, 5:05 AM
tephen Dale's insight: Flipboard (an App available for iOS and Android) is my favourite app for consuming and sharing inrormation. Relevence is improved by being able to choose the topics you want to follow, and liking or favouriting specific articles.
The recent addition of the Flipboard Editort now enables you to create and curate your own magazine, which you can share with others, or keep simply as a place for bookmarking.
In this article, Sue Waters provides a step by step guide on how to use and make the most of the Flipboard features. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
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 
Lydia Gracia's comment,
June 11, 4:09 AM
Some months ago they were in beta version. Effectively they're Spanish. I will go into the tool attracted by the Visual personnalization of the content.
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Sometimes you need to quickly immerse yourself in a new field. You might want to gain expertise or quickly gauge what the current issues are around a particular topic. One way of doing this is by c... Via Howard Rheingold
Robin Good's insight:
The ability to discover good and reliable sources and to organize them in ways that make it easy to track and monitor their informationn streams is one of the key skills required for any content curator worth of this title. 
LuAnne Holder's comment,
June 14, 5:33 PM
Howard, I love your idea about using Twitter and Diigo together. Thanks for sharing.
Stephen Dale's curator insight,
June 15, 3:37 AM
Requires a bit more effort and dedication that using something like Google Alerts, but I think if you're prepared to continually refine who you're following, you're likely to hone in on content that has greater relevance. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
Instafeed is a iOS app which allows you to create custom lists of Instagram users and to re-post easily (with auto-credit) great images from other Instagram users to your own account. Instafeed offers a growing set of pre-packaged feeds, on popular topics like fashion, pets and food, to which you can add your own curated set of custom feeds in which you decide who are your specific Instagram sources. I would have loved to see a feed creation option based on hashtags rather than just on Instagram people, as it is very rare to find Instagram authors that post sistematically on a specific topic / theme / style. Usability-wise I wasted a lot of time trying to understand how to watch any existing feed. Beyond that there are only a couple of extra commands only. But for me the need to double tap on the home page feed to view it was a frustrating barrier. I'd click each time only to be brought into seeing the list of sources for that channel. Other than this InstaFeed is as easy as sneezing. The option to repost (with credit) Instagram pics you find in InstaFeed channels directly to your Instagram account is invaluable as it opens for the first time the opportunity for "curating" other people images on Instagram. Given the huge quantity of visual material being created daily on Instagram, it is only going to be a matter of time before you will start seeing many other new services attempt to offer tools to more easily find, pick, group and republish relevant Instagram (or for that matter Flickr, Picasa, etc.) images to a theme or topic channel. Free to use. App store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instafeed/id632821847?mt=8 More info: http://www.appiphanyinc.com/ Read more about it on TheNextWeb: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/06/07/instafeed-an-instagram-client-that-lets-you-build-custom-feeds-based-on-topic/ Digital Trends: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/instafeed-wants-to-make-you-a-curator-of-instagram-pics/ 
Fabrizio Faraco's curator insight,
June 10, 4:02 AM
Robin Good has always something excellent to suggest to those who love curating 
Henrik Safegaard - Cloneartist's curator insight,
June 10, 4:10 AM
You can repost any snaps you like directly to Instagram, which is a nice touch, and you can post comments too. Delete the scoop?
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Curation tools and web services designed to create learning paths, curriculums, thematic collections and PKM portfolios
Robin Good's insight:
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. 
Raquel Oliveira's curator insight,
June 9, 9:50 PM
Need more time to taste all the tips, but at first, seems very useful ! Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
Audio excerpt: https://soundcloud.com/user458849/curation-and-search-joel Full interview: http://valueofsimple.com/smart-and-simple-matters-podcast-023-with-robin-good/ MP3 full interview: http://traffic.libsyn.com/valueofsimple/023_SmartAndSimpleMattersPodcastFromValueOfSimple.mp3 Subscribe to iTunes podcast: http://valueofsimple.com/itunes Delete the scoop?
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What is content curation about? Diagram, charts and infographics to make sense of the curation conundrum
Robin Good's insight:
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. 
Soledad Vicente's curator insight,
June 9, 6:17 AM
Una vez más, a través de una infografía llegamos al concepto, a la definición de términos. Con lo que sigo sin estar de acuerdo es con el término, me temo que ya acuñado, de "curador de contenidos" 
Steve Schildwachter's curator insight,
June 9, 8:44 PM
Even -- no, ESPECIALLY -- if terms like "content curation" really annoy or confuse you, then take a look at this resource. Delete the scoop?
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As the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Thomas P. Campbell thinks deeply about curating—not just selecting art objects, but placing them in a setting where the public can learn their stories.
Robin Good's insight:
"We live in an age of ubiquitous information, and sort of "just add water" expertise, but there's nothing that compares with the presentation of significant objects in a well-told narrative... what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex, esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it for a general audience."
"Pietro was suspicious of formal art training, art history training, because he feared that it filled people up with jargon, and then they just classified things rather than looking at them, and he wanted to remind us that all art was once contemporary, and he wanted us to use our eyes..."
Nancy White's curator insight,
May 31, 3:50 PM
Many good ideas can be found here regarding what we need to teach students about curating digital content for learning. The importance of story - and to really look at something (or read it!). The importance of asking quesitons and seeking answers before adding it to your curated collection to determine if it is a good fit. There are many parallels to the world of digital curation. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
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: 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. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
Monogram is a web and mobile publishing app which allows you to curate your own fashion magazine by writing your own content and being able to "sprinkle" it with highly relevant shoppable fashion items that can be sold directly through your pages. In fact, Monogram provides an integrated search facility that makes it easy to find shoppable fashion items to clip (even as you write) and add them to your own magazine. From the Techcrunch review: "Monogram provides a full web editing tool suite, which will allow bloggers to publish and share their favorite fashions with others. Bloggers can create posts, or full “magazines,” of all their favorite content, which readers can browse or subscribe to. Each post provides shoppable links to products either featured in, or similar to, the clothes and accessories that are being shown off on the page. ... Rather than having to scour the web for the items they want to add, and putting in affiliate links, the Monogram platform provides an integrated search functionality within the platform, which scours the web for the products bloggers wish to share." "...[the company is] working on figuring out an affiliate model so that they can get paid for the products that are sold thanks to their magazines." Available on the web and on iOS devices. Free to use. Find out more: http://www.monogrammag.com/ App store download: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monogram/id517886439?mt=8 
Therese Torris's comment,
May 27, 2:53 PM
Hi Robin, thanks for pointing out the search engine. I remain convinced that it will be very difficult for Monogram to succeed. There is a huge competition for fashionista's time and retailers' products out there and some of the competitors like Fab.com, The Fancy, Polyvore and many others are pretty compelling. And There are also a lot of retailers that let customers put together lookboks and share them with their community (like the fabulous site net-à-porter)
Robin Good's comment,
May 27, 5:06 PM
Yes Therese, I agree. I am actually glad that Monogram and other small startups are not refraining from attempting to innovate in this apparently crowded space, as I am convinced that there is still plenty of space for many new companies, unless each one of them wants to be the new Pinterest. If they specialize and work on niche audiences and specific use cases I think they may indeed provide a useful service for many. And in the end if they do not try what better suggestion do you have for them? :-)
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Robin Good's insight:
Clipzine is a web app which makes it easy to collect images from any website page and to visually organize them into page-based collections. On each page it is possible to place as many as 24 pieces of content and to decide how large or small each element will be. The user can expand each imported element over two or more tiles and move it around to any position. It is also possible to use one or more tiles to add custom text and information and to format it professionally. One key practical use of Clipzine that can be helpful in testing out its capablities is its ability to create a visual magazine of any Pinterest board. Just go to the selected Pinterest board page, click the Clipzine bookmarklet and select the unique Clipzine option to capture "all" images available on that page at once. Once captured all the images in a "zine", click on Edit / Syling and then on the Styling button that appears above each page content. Now hover with your mouse on any image in the collection and experiment with the feature buttons that appear around and in the center of each image. The final collection, called a zine, can be saved, published on the web, shared on social media, embedded on other sites or saved to a PDF file. My comment: This is one of the very few curation tools that leverages a tremendously powerful variable: control of positioning and size of elements in a collection. This is very useful as it empowers the curator to go beyond the linear top-down list or newspaper/magazine sequence and to create a more varied "equilibrium" between the elements in the collection. Promising concept. Powerful visual control in the hands of the curator. A bit disappointing implementation and not so intuitive and simple to use (for now). Free to use. Ad supported. Find out more / Try it out now: https://clipzine.me/ 
Melanie Jean Juneau's comment,
May 29, 8:30 PM
such a kind comment, i never thought about it that way but you are right
Inyoung Lee's comment,
May 29, 8:36 PM
I am pleased too. the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws. :)
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Robin Good's insight:
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:
Where it could do better:
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.
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 Delete the scoop?
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A selection of fashion sites and tools that allow you to collect your favorite products and brands
Robin Good's insight:
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. 
Style Mint LLC's curator insight,
June 17, 10:54 PM
This is a great link to find everything you need to dress your best. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
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/ 
Giri Kumar's comment,
June 15, 9:28 PM
Dear Steve I am yet to know more on Open Topic. Scoop.it Ifind this easier to move around.
Gordon Gower's comment,
June 16, 12:18 AM
Just got my ticket to open today... haven't started using it.
Robin Good's comment,
June 16, 5:29 AM
Hi Steve, Scoop.it is a more mature new curation tool, that offers an audience and extra reach beyond its toolset. OpenTopic is a promising and feature-rich news curation tool but we will need to give it a bit more time before making a reliable evaluation. As I wrote it looks that for those interested not so much in curation, but in saving time and having fresh content on-topic to distirbute across multiple channels this is definitely a possible alternative.
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Robin Good's insight:
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/ Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
Clipular is Chrome browser extension and web app which is capable of capturing any text, web page, image, video, diagram or any other content you can see on a web page, wile indexing the text it contains and letting you organize it into public/private collections. The Clipular capturing tool can capture full web pages, or any portion that you specify. Captured content can be tagged (assigned to one or more categories), commented and easily shared on your preferred social media channels. Clipular "boards" (collections) can be set to be private or can be publicly shared. There is an import function to bring in your existing Clipboard.com collections. (Unfortunately, the display of web pages imported in this fashion is quite disappointing as they are forced to appear - even when clicked on - at a thumbnail size). A unique organizational feature called "Group" lets you easily grab items from your dashboard and throw them easily into a new or existing collection. A collection can be published / displayed in one of four different modes: a) Magazine b) Poster c) Story d) Pattern My comment: This is an excellent content capturing and organization tool, meant for internal work and not for publishing collections to the public (at least for now). The capturing tool is extremely effective, and the organizational features also work very well. The display, in the main dashboard and the four display modes do have some margin of improvement. Good alternative to Pinterest when you need not so much to collect images, but rather web pages, text excerpts, video collections or other materials. Free to use. Try it out now: http://www.clipular.com Chrome extension (inndispensable): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clipular-reinvent-screen/cjbjepchlgclmpinlbbeinajphohgfod 
Ernesto Alegre's curator insight,
June 14, 5:32 AM
La evolución del bookmarklet en extensión de browser más robusta, dentro de un concepto de curación visual de contenido. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
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 
wyatt christman's curator insight,
June 12, 9:40 PM
I have been testing it for a bit and pretty pleased with the results. Looking to expand a bit more before fully committing but almost there. 
Ajaan Rob Hatfield's curator insight,
June 16, 9:09 PM
Now I know why my google alerts are hit and miss...time for a "cool change". 
Ajaan Rob Hatfield's curator insight,
June 17, 9:06 PM
Thank you Robin for sharing. I use the site for my research. I set my key research terms. Talk Walker Alerts works great! Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
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/ 
Mark Opauszky's comment,
June 5, 4:32 PM
Good insights Robin and thanks for the great words. We talk about activating our self-serve capability all the time, and we hope to very soon. Truth is we have a big focus on our B2B enterprise activity right now, and it’s really helping us get things right for our users. We will get back to anyone interested in giving us a try though and we live for the feedback. Thanks Again.
Peg Corwin's curator insight,
June 16, 2:30 PM
I envision this like of LookBook platform becoming like flexible websites. Another such site is Lookcast.com, which has an ecommerce back end. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
Curation is going to significantly affect how we search and find information about topics we know little of or that we want to learn more about. The latest version of Blekko, a search engine which already leverages curation to organize and improve the quality of search results, has introduced "categories" inside its search page results. In other words when you search for a specific topic, you are provided with different sets of relevant results grouped by topic and focus. Thus, if I search for "content curation" I will get a set of semantically categorized groups relevant to my selected topic, including "Top results", "Twitter", "Marketing", "Librarianship" and more. In this way it is much easier to drill down into different "types" of results and to easily identify the type of information you are looking for. N.B.: If you haven't seen or used Blekko before, do register and login to see the type of features, that while still primitive and a bit nerdy in their present implementation, I think are going to drive the new type of search engines we are likely to see emerge in the near future. Free to use. Try it now: https://blekko.com/ To register: https://blekko.com/ws/?f=1&q=%2Flogin Tutorial - How to search with Blekko: http://help.blekko.com/index.php/a-tutorial-for-searching-with-blekko/ 
Fernando Zamith's curator insight,
June 3, 8:27 AM
O Google já tem substituto: Blekko. Os media sociais e a curadoria ao serviço da pesquisa (e vice-versa). Resultados de pesquisas adaptados ao tamanho do monitor que estamos a usar e organizados por categorias de diferentes cores. Muitos anos e muitos milhões de dólares depois, o Blekko está pronto para ser o motor de busca de referência. Experimentem! Vale a pena! 
Alejandro Tortolini's curator insight,
June 3, 5:11 PM
Blekko agrupa visualmente las búsquedas de contenido.
Therese Torris's curator insight,
June 4, 5:46 AM
Don't know how powerful it is as a search engine but Blekko certainly has a very attractive visual display and offers much needed options to filter search by topic or category (used to be called "parametric search"). Curious to see how it catches on but will definitely give it a try myself. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
To help others learn something they are interested in, one of the most effective approaches is one of providing suggestions, start-off points, tips on resources and playgrounds where the learner can jump into to build his own personalized learning journey. Huzefa (Zef) Neemuchwala, an entrepreneurial educator with expertise in the application of games and simulations in education, has a very inspiring short post on his YellowSequoia blog. He writes: "One of the major stumbling blocks with our education clients is that they perceive games as yet another thing that they have to get their heads around to teach in class. We have tried to address this by asking them to modify this approach in class from being an expert to being a facilitator. In today’s connected classrooms, students have access to all the world’s content. Standing up in the front of the classroom and talking is not a relevant teaching method anymore. Educators need to facilitate not teach; and curation is an important skill to enable facilitation." Rightful. Insightful. Inspiring. 8/10 Original post: http://www.yellowsequoia.com/the-flawed-perception-on-curation/ More info about the author and his company: http://www.yellowsequoia.com/about/ P.S.: I wish the author had published a link to the original discussion on LinkedIN which inspired his post. On this topic check also my article: http://www.masternewmedia.org/curation-for-education-and-learning/ 
Alfredo Corell's curator insight,
June 7, 6:44 PM
An expert always provides feedback on the next steps....
A facilitator... facilitates the student to learn from peer feedback and self reflection 
Ivon Prefontaine's curator insight,
June 7, 7:38 PM
We know we have lots of self-appointed experts. They masquerade as facilitators as well. 
Begoña Iturgaitz's curator insight,
June 13, 11:44 AM
focus on chart. The other ideas are the ones we've been dealing with for...ten years? Nire iritziz taula da interesgarriena. Gainerako ideiek +10 urte? dauzkate. Delete the scoop?
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Robin Good's insight:
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:
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 
Alex Grech's curator insight,
May 30, 1:34 PM
Still need to explore this properly, but at face value it promises to be a powerful magazine-style curation tool. 
Michelle Cordy's curator insight,
May 30, 4:36 PM
Via Ted Newcomb and Robin Good: a new to me curation tool. Delete the scoop?
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Favebucket is the assistant that helps you save, recollect and share your favorites online.
Robin Good's insight:
Favebucket is a web app which allows you to easily clip any web page, video or content and to organize according to categories (buckets) and tags. An integrated bookmarklet makes it easy to clip any content on any web page, while suggesting relevant tags and the option to add each item to a bucket (collection). Individual contents saved with Favebucket can be easily shared on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Organization of tags and buckets, search and navigation are extremely effective. In addition Favebucket is readying a series of utilities to import your bookmarks from other services. The first one supported is soon-to-be-closed Clipboard.com. My comments: Navigation and search through the tags and buckets system is extremely effective and speedy allowing easy grouping and finding of related items. The major limitation is that buckets (collections of items) cannot be easily embedded on another site or published publicly at a unique URL. Good for private curation and bookmarking work. Free to use. More info: http://favebucket.com/ 
wanderingsalsero's curator insight,
May 31, 10:03 PM
I'm going to try this. I like the look of picking my tags from that tag cloud over on the right of the page. Having to manually type them in, in the Draffo bookmarket that I've been using, is a drag (although I like everything else about Draggoo).
It's going to be interesting to see if THIS one is any more practical in the long term as a bookmarker. 
Víctor V. Valera Jiménez's curator insight,
June 2, 8:09 PM
Herramienta que te permite guardar cualquier página web, vídeo o contenido y organizarlo en categorias y etiquetas, algo que resulta muy fácil gracias a su bookmarklet.
Además estos contenidos pueden ser facilmente compartidos en nuestras redes sociales favoritas (Facebook, Twitter...). Delete the scoop?
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What is digital curation and why is it important to you? Leading experts in the curation and preservation of digital objects (such as databases, photos, vide...
Robin Good's insight:
Here is a 5-minute video recorded at the DigCurV Final Conference which took place on the 6th and 7th of May 2013 in Florence, Italy, in which several academic and research professionals in the fields of curation and preservation of digital objects (such as databases, photos, videos, websites, etc) share their views on what exactly is digital curation, and why it matters. DigCurV is a project funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme to develop a curriculum framework for training in Digital Curation. To learn more, visit http://digcur-education.org Original video: http://youtu.be/6cuOdgvYRGM 
Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's curator insight,
May 26, 1:06 AM
Digital Curation - Making the information accessible to different types of developers to continue the sharing of past knowledge with future generations. 
Pippa Yeoman's curator insight,
June 6, 7:04 PM
Digital curation - the preservation and repurposing of content. Using digital hubs to collect, collate and make a contribution to conversations in your area of academic interest. Delete the scoop?
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