I feel like I can always tell when I land on a site that is doing the automated curation thing. And it always makes me feel like the character in Coma who walks into the giant room of patients….there’s really no-one there, and it’s pretty creepy.

Ouch. Painful analogy Rosemary but I like it!

If you’re going to curate, don’t automate it. To me, true content curation is taking content and adding your value to that content, manually.

Provide your perspective based on your experience, your opinion based on the fact you disagree or agree with the piece of content etc…

There are a number of ways to add value to a piece of curated content… but in my opinion, if you’re automating the process… then a robot is doing the curation… not you. And people visit a site to see and get to know you or your company, not a robot.

Hi Mark. I agree with your list in fact, the topic could be widened to include any business decision that seeks solutions that seem to scale fast but require little to no investment into a human.

We seem to be in an era where businesses believe products can get a business from A to Z through mechanical ways that are “safer” than an ooey-gooey human who requires more maintenance and direction and who are not controlled by If__ Then__ code.

Like you always say, it’s not B2B, or Machine to Machine, it’s P2P.

I think you are really articulating a best practice here Joseph. Thanks.

P2P … giving you a virtual high-five!!!

As Donna says, this effort doesn’t qualify as curation. It’s an automated feed. Curation is done by a human curator. Robin Good published a checklist of what a content curator does and I summarised it in a blog post here (it’s about half way down the post)
http://community.paper.li/2012/03/07/why-a-content-curator-is-not-an-editor/
Curation done as Robin describes here can be very valuable imho.

Amen to that, Donna.

Host of interesting issues today, Mark!

First, we are flooded with content everyday. I am considering subdividing my Google Reader because I have trouble getting through it. I think there is real value in trusted curation.

After a knee-jerk Luddite reaction, I can see that curation might well be an activity that could be performed by a well-constructed algorithm. The company is probably buying an off-the-shelf piece of crap from their consultants, but if they were in fact to carefully construct an expert program with the help of someone knowledgeable in the field it could be good.

So I think the company will be disappointed but believe that the potential is there for someone who does it right.

Thanks for making us think again!

- Gary

Thanks Marty and Mark…

I try to think of curation in the sense of museum curation:

A fossil of a Tyrannosaurus Rex by itself is cool… but a museum takes that same fossil and puts it in a scene with other dinosaurs or on display to add value to that fossil and for the people who visit the museum.

That same museum doesn’t just add fossils in some boring line.

So do that with your curating… be a museum.

Seems to me Mark your “Five big problems with content curation” are very similar to my passion for self-directed learning — the need for educational curricula to address students’ interest in learning the subject/s presented.

Your thoughts are welcome

That is a very interesting perspective Jeff. It might be a baby step in the right direction. And yes, they were thrilled with it as if they had just had a successful moon landing or something : ) Thanks for adding your expert perspective on this!

Really smart comment Marty. Thanks for contributing today!

Very interesting analogy. I like how you connected the dots here. Serving individual needs will create the greatest long-term benefits i think.

Mark,

This seriously sets me off as a small business professional in the financial services world (insurance).

Every event I attend people are talking about services that perform this function and well intentioned business owners that understand the value of content but are too scared to create it on their own pay money for this service.

This is a form of SCAM to me. Because the content is NOT doing what content should do.

Love that you tackled this topic… Huge… Huge problem.

Thanks,

Ryan H>

I totally agree Mark. I personally know of a “content curator” company that pushes the same content out for all their clients, sometimes in the same market. It’s disingenuous and totally misses the point. Why push content that has no real connection to the business’ core values or offerings. Very frustrating to deal with when the CEO thinks this now has him “covered” in social media.

Thanks Mark, i recently posted about the same thing, and like you, got loads of reaction. Its great to get more information and other peoples thoughts on this topic.
I suspect, like many other things, the answer to this one is somewhere in between the two poles. Done well, it can have clear benefits to your brand (with the various caveats) and done badly, it will no doubt damage.
The only thing I would add is that its important to challenge our perceptions of these things. Too easy to get sniffy and then miss the boat in my experience!

Thanks for adding your voice from the trenches Ryan. Much appreciated

Wow. I am seeing the same thing. Companies seem so desperate to do SOMETHING that this seems like a quick fix. Great comment Alys. Thanks!

You make valid points however automated aggregation of content is not really curation. A skilled curator can add value by bringing their expertise or perspective to the conversation. In the financial sector where many consumers of information have almost limitless supply there really is no way to filter the absolute torrent and make it meaningful. Over the past decade the volume has increased exponentially to the point where many are simply overwhelmed.

In my view there is room for a well thought out solution that tackles the tidal wave of information from the professional consumers point of view while also providing customisation and flexibility in how and where it is consumed.

Until the day comes when we can no longer believe the bog post above was written by human ( AI passes the blogger Turing Test ) we will enjoy fresh content and perspectives like those above.

After that day, when we can no longer distinguish, there will be also be no purpose in providing content, because if will not be clear if site visitors are real or not ! We will instead have to provide what clients are looking for and know which of the “readership” are really consumers and which regurgitators.

The resultant “denial of service” from within must ultimately warrant a “walled garden” within which humans can interact without machine assisted intervention and who are veritably human (signs of this are already out there if you ever typed something you struggled to read).

BTW when pattern recognition technology matches human eyesight – it will be chaos (but that’s just another Turing type test) !

One solution is known in English as “The Pub” or IRL and it will continue to be a place where real business (rather than a transaction) is done.

Personally, I started curating content on a specific topic (Digital Arabia) to serve as a personal archive. However, I decide to share it because it might of interest to some people. I curated a a select number of articles that I found interesting and provide a brief commentary on each one. I found it to be a useful personal exercise and I think it brought some value to others who were trying to keep up with this topic. I definitely agree with @twitter-840561:disqus @cendrinemedia:disqus @twitter-16221123:disqus about the distinction between curation and aggregation

sorry for the multiple posts – I had some problems with disqus

I’m glad you feel comfortable debating here. I love it too! I’m fortunate that you are part of the community.

I agree with the distinction but also think the moment you do something to the data beyond collecting it, you are curating. This company had a systemt that was filtering and categorizing, albeit through a computer. So that would indeed be curating, right? Does curating have to be human? Thanks for the thought-provoking comment Morgan!

Really interesting James. We are certainly heading into a new world of ethical considerations and crossed lines when machines start writing the content. When will see the first blog post with this disclosure: This content of this post was assisted by a software program.

Hmm – Mark you now have me pondering .

At this level much of our work, already crosses those boundaries. We produce “expert reports” at very low cost, where much of the input is data-mined, visualized and commentated by software.
This has, I believe, huge social value. As I can pass my expertise on to thousands of buildings per night.
We are big on disclosure and integrity – I wonder should I flag our reports “assisted by a software program” – I will have to think.
In our case I am not sure it matters, people want answers not debate (they have my blog if they wish for that). But in social settings it does seem to be more of a betrayal of trust.
- Interested to hear your thoughts.

I think there is a a subtle difference in what you are saying and the idea of computer created content (which is certainly on the horizon). Technically, if I use spell-check, it is computer-assisted content. But what is more fascinating is when a blogger will be to outsource content creation under his/her guidance to create entire posts. What an interesting time we live in!

I read more posts than I miss on this blog. We (Andy Bailey, Dino Dogan, Daniel Lewis and others) were on a livestream Hangout yesterday (recording on my blog) and discussing this topic, and your post. I mentioned that curation can bring a lot of value when it has the human touch. Most of the time though, it’s automated. Paper.li for example requires little human involvement and not even a desire for reciprocity let alone consistent reading.

We’ve had success with C.C., but it is frustrating having to bend and breaking to your curators site. Yes the content drives people to our website and might lead to leads, but is it worth the $50 a month?

We are big fans of storify but the problem with apps like scoop.it and storify is that they focus on bringing people to their hosted pages. If you were to reverse that way of thinking and push that content back to your homebase aka corporate site/blog/etc then you might be more interested. Being able to create more dynamic and relevant content for your audience through curation back to your site is the best opportunity…

Curation or content marketing are very broad “ideas” and “tools” not answers and solutions. How they are deployed by folks concerned with their audience and brand is what will determine value. We have a bit of unique view at Scribit where curation and content marketing are the foundation of what we do every day.

Gregg Freishtat
CEO, Scribit.com

I want less, not more, info. I ignore most of what comes my way. Sounds more like an SEO ploy than anything of value. Just because a company wants to “talk” at me doesn’t mean I want to “listen.”

Thanks and good luck with your venture.

A thinly-veiled advertisement. Well played sir! : )

A valuable lesson and companies should listen to that advice! Thanks Diana.

I think there are some uses for automation in content curation. Specifically, think of using a spam filter to weed out all of the off-topic and junk articles in you alerts and feeds. A program like MyCurator, a WordPress plugin, does this, allowing you to focus on adding your insights and comments to the content.

First let me say there are so many excellent comments on this post. As the founder of a company being built on curation, I can honestly say I know how much work true content curators do. Right now the major trend is to push information, but this will end. There will come a day soon when people will want to have more conversations about relevant information and the human curator will be the one who initiates these conversations by perfecting their craft and bringing special context and insight to the table.