If you follow the discussion about content strategy and new-school publishing, you’ve probably seen at least a piece of the “content curation” tussle that’s been heating up on the web. Here’s the 30-second version:
NEWSPAPERS: “The youngs say they’re curating things, even though they do not work in museums.”
SOCIAL MEDIA/CONTENT MARKETING PEOPLE: “Content curation is the new old newness. You must pure-play some content curation to leverage your thought leadership. It has good info-molecule and is lemon lemon easy thing. AHHHHH.”
NEWSPAPERS: “THIS will save newspapers. This and iPads.”
ACTUAL CURATORS: “YOU ARE FOUL OOZE OF DECADENT COMMERCE.”
CONTENT STRATEGY PEOPLE: “So, you know, this ‘content curation’ thing with the content is sort of what we already do. Here in content strategy where we are content strategists. But it’s not just really about making lists, because you need strategy. For your content. Hi.”
EDITORS: “Wait, isn’t that just—? No, no, forget it. We’re going to the bar.”
ACTUAL CURATORS: “OOZE.”
10,000 BLOGGERS: “Controversy! Curation! Monorail! Jazz hands.”
Names were called. Realizations were had. Many exclamation points went to their deaths.
Watch This Sloth
The author at home. (Image credit)
Now, the debate over terminology and who gets to be a curator doesn’t really grab me—Scoble can call himself World-President Viceroy of Fancy Space Publishing and I will still be okay—but I do think there are some interesting and useful ideas in all this froth.
Since I blog in geological time, I went off to the woods and wrote a five-part series on content curation, which I’ll post every business day or so for a week starting on Monday morning. In those posts, I’ll talk about two very different kinds of online content curation—curation as filtering/mosaic/storytelling and curation as collection/preservation/management—along with ideas, skills, and perspectives from the art and museum curation worlds that may help us do better work.
Edited to add: links!
- Part 1: Curating the Deck Chairs on the Titanic
- Part 2: Between the Click and the Curator
- Part 3: The Curate and the Curator
- Part 4: Slouching Toward the Curatorial
- Part 5: Curation Conclusions
- Also relevant: Credo: Addendum.
Apéritifs
- “On the Tip of Creative Tongues” at The New York Times
- “Can ‘Curation’ Save Media?” at Business Insider
- “The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators” at Scobleizer
- “Content Marketing: Definitions of Curation & Context” at Top Rank
- “Curation nation” at the Brain Traffic blog
- “Am I curating yet?” at Dare to Comment
- “You Are Not a Curator” at NewCurator
- “We are not curators” at The Clutter Museum
- “Why Content Curation Is Here to Stay” at Fast Company
- “…and now I’m off to curate my coffee table” at Curating.info
Erin Kissane, you are a superb writer and I can’t wait to read more. Amazing, too, that a sloth has such command of cadence and hyperbole. Well done.
While I was concerned that you stole the “AHHHHH” quote directly from my mind, I was happy to then learn that you linked to my blog. So I guess we’re even.
Curation. AHHHHH!
I can hardly wait to dig in.
I admit I read your epic poem as if hearing a Greek chorus or five, standing just barely offstage droning. The drama!
I love so many phrases in this one blog post, I think I’ll have to curate them.
Can “jazz hands!” be the new “curation” please? When the check arrives after dinner, I like to wave my hand and say “MATH!” to magically compute the tip. In the same way, I want to be able to invoke JAZZ HANDS! and magically aggregate complementary content.
Cannot WAIT for next week’s posts.
@Kristina: You are too nice and my ears turn pink. (Sloths love cadence!)
@Ian: How’s this? “AHHHHHHH. (via @be3d)”
@Carolyn: I’m glad the drone came through. Precisely what I’d imagined.
@Margot: I will dispatch an owl bearing yr request to Hogwarts with all expedience. JAZZ HANDS.