The more I read about content curation, the more I believe we’re experiencing a publishing evolution.
Back in blogging’s early days, posts consisted of lists of links, which later morphed into lists of links annotated by commentary from the blogger. Still later, long-form posting came about giving guys like me the opportunity to bloviate ad naseum.
With the onset of social media came feeds and streams, which amplified the noise level to such deafening proportions that it could be the equivalent of standing next to the speakers at a Deep Purple concert!
To put it another way, we’ve gone way beyond the information super highway and ramped onto the LA freeway system during evening rush hour!
Even better, combine driving LA freeway traffic with Deep Purple playing on the radio at full blast and you get a picture of what I’m talking about.
“What? You can’t hear me? Wait, I’ll turn it down. That’s better. Now we can talk.”
Something has to be done about this and, thankfully, it is. It’s called content curation and its focused on organizing web content in such a way that crowded passageways become more navigable. It may not be enough to turn our content consumption into a Sunday afternoon drive on a scenic byway, but it does reduce the stress quite a bit.
ReadWriteWeb Editor Richard McManus says that such topically organized content, which he refers to as topic pages, are the “next big thing.” And they are the next big thing because they have to be the next big thing or we will all go stir crazy due to the cacophony.
In his post, McManus references Medium, which happens to be the next technological apparatus to foment from the fertile minds of Evan Williams and Biz Stone. (When you consider they literally put blogging on the map with Blogger, then followed up with the micro-blogging sequel called Twitter, it’s probably smart to pay attention to this latest creation.)
But, Medium is one of but many curation tools designed to organize content into topical pages. Currently, I’m learning the curation craft using Rebelmouse, Scoop.it and Paper.li.
I believe that expert curators will become the next Internet superstars because they will do for us what we won’t do for ourselves, and that is undertake the arduous task of organization on our own. Think of these people as digital librarians organizing content into a sort of Dewey decimal system that makes it easier to find what we’re looking for and become more productive as a result.
If McManus is correct in his assertion, curation is the “new black.” I’m ready to embrace it and do my best to curate content the members of my tribe will appreciate. What about you?
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