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Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what's interesting, happening, and cool in their focus. Curators tend to have a unique and consistent point of view--providing a reliable context for the content that they discover and organize

Sites like BoingBoing and Brain Pickings are great content curators. And now brands are getting into the act. Harley Davidson's site Ridebook features content in culture, style, music, and travel. And increasingly, curators are emerging as a critical filter that helps niche content consumers find "signal" in noise

anyone who steps up and volunteers to curate in their area of knowledge and passion is taking on a Herculean task. They're going to stand between the web and their readers, using all of the tools at their disposal to "listen" to the web, and then pull out of the data stream nuggets of wisdom, breaking news, important new voices, and other salient details. It's real work, and requires a tireless commitment to being engaged and ready to rebroadcast timely material. While there may be an economic benefit for being a "thought leader" and "trusted curator," it's not going to happen overnight. Which is to say, being a superhero is often a thankless job.

Despite shrinking newsrooms and overworked reporters, journalism is in fact thriving. The art of information gathering, analysis and dissemination has arguably been strengthened over the last several years, and given rise and importance to a new role: the journalistic curator.

with the push of social media and advancements in communications technology, the curator has become a journalist by proxy. They are not on the front lines, covering a particular beat or industry, or filing a story themselves, but they are responding to a reader need. With a torrent of content emanating from innumerable sources (blogs, mainstream media, social networks), a vacuum has been created between reporter and reader — or information gatherer and information seeker — where having a trusted human editor to help sort out all this information has become as necessary as those who file the initial report.

“Curation,” says Sayid Ali, owner of Newsflick.net, “gathers all these fragmented pieces of information to one location, allowing people to get access to more specialized content.”

The social media generation puts accessibility above almost all else, and nothing is more accessible than the world wide web. As a result, a new type of viewing experience has emerged--quick views over your breakfast cereal or during your lunch break. But video producers often fail to cater to this type of viewing experience, instead focusing on what has been successful over the past half-century.

the current online environment calls for video and content that is made specifically for online audiences. Meaning short-form video with a quality that matches the production level of offline content. Not spinoffs or originally discarded footage, but shows and content made specifically for online viewers

Online video doesn't have the luxury of longer-form shows that a viewer schedules time to watch. More likely, they stumbled upon your video by chance on their Twitter or Facebook feed. They haven't committed to watching their video, but their interest is piqued and they've pushed play. Don't waste that chance. The video must grab and engage them nearly instantaneously--if not, you'll lose potential longterm fans. Unengaging, ported-over content won't survive in our ADD environment.

the brands that win will prioritize engagement over exposure. They will flip the traditional approach of using mass reach to connect with the subset of people who matter on its head. They will super-serve the most important people for their brand first and use the resulting insights and advocacy to then broaden their reach and make the entire media and marketing plan work harder.

This generation has grown up living digital lives. This has fundamentally changed their relationship with media and technology — and with brands. They don’t want to be talked at, but they do want to be invited in to the discussion. They thrive on creation, curation, connection and community. As a result, we call them Gen C. The behaviors of Gen C have less to do with the year they were born and more to do with their attitude and mindset. For example, while 80% of people under 35 are Gen C, only 65% of Gen C is under 35 [1].

Gen C cares more about expressing themselves than any generation before.

you need writers and team members who can think strategically about the content that will resonate most with your audience.

Search for people asking questions about your keyword or phrase on Twitter.

“Content curation is not about collecting links or being an information packrat, it is more about putting them into a context with organization, annotation and presentation.  Content curators provide a customized, vetted selection of the best and most relevant resources on a very specific topic or theme.”

Storify now has 1.2 million users visiting its site as of March, up 50% from the prior month. During March, Storify’s stories were read 14 million times across all sites, including those were the feeds were embedded. For comparison’s sake, Storify, which launched into public beta this time last year, was averaging 6.5 million monthly views as of last August.

One of the most common mistakes made when designing social applications is focusing immediately on rich, heavyweight interactions rather than lightweight ones. All the best social experiences online map closely to how offline social experiences work: offline, people build relationships slowly, one lightweight interaction at a time.

Every now and again we have more heavyweight interactions, such as family dinners, big nights out with friends, birthdays, anniversaries, family vacations and so on. But if we hadn’t built the relationship through many lightweight interactions over time, we’d have no interest in the heavyweight ones. The aggregation of many lightweight interactions is very powerful. It builds deep relationships, and helps people curate parts of their identity.

It takes months and years to build relationships with people, and they all are built on many lightweight interactions over time. And people build relationships with brands in the same way as they build relationships with people: slowly, one interaction at a time. Just as we don’t suddenly become best friends with someone, we don’t suddenly fall in love with a brand – so build products that support lightweight ways for people to interact and show the aggregations of those interactions over time.

Care about consumers’ experiences; don’t aim to disrupt what they’re trying to do. To that point, don’t expect an exchange of value in order to get a consumer to disclose personal information to the brand. If you are getting information from a consumer, use it to improve his or her experience. Don’t cannibalize the relationship being established.

innovation is often triggered by those too naïve to be aware of why something can’t be done

Innovations happen when you take beta concepts live, sometimes by necessity, sometimes by opportunity.

YouTube hit an incredible milestone of 1 billion unique monthly visitors, connecting 15 percent of the planet to the videos they love. And those global fan communities are watching more than 6 billion hours of video each month on YouTube; almost an hour a month for every person on Earth and 50 percent more this year than last.

one of the most valuable consumer groups--Generation C. This audience is defined by its desire to be constantly connected, and at the center of creating and curating content for social communities.

on YouTube, it isn’t just about rallying behind one show; it is about reaching the passionate fan communities of Gen C, an audience that influences more than $500 billion in annual consumer spending

The news audience is evolving faster than news providers, though. Gingras told us that, only a few years ago, 50% of the inbound audience went to the front page, and the other 50% went straight to stories or other pages. By now, 75% of traffic is going to stories. A minority of visitors ever see a site's front-page curated presentation of the news.

the value of information is not just in the knowledge of it; it's in what you can do with it.

News isn't just about information. It's also storytelling. Anyone can publish text, photos or even video to the Web now. But technology enables new, compelling storytelling techniques that could shine in the hands of dedicated news organizations.

We don’t allow schemes that buy and sell Pins or pay people per Pin, follow, etc. We know that some popular Pinners have relationships with approved affiliate networks or participate in paid social media campaigns, and that’s still okay, as long as they’re not being compensated for each action on Pinterest. So if you're in a deal to earn $1 every time you pin a corporation's products, you're out of luck. But if you’re a highly influential blogger in a five-figure partnership with a brand, making money is A-OK. Here's more: A business can pay someone to help them put together a board that represents their brand. For example, it’s okay for a guest blogger to curate a board for a local boutique’s profile. We don’t allow that boutique to pay the blogger to Pin products to her own boards. A person can be given commission by an approved affiliate network. For example, it’s okay for a blogger to get paid when someone purchases a product that blogger has Pinned. However, we don’t allow the blogger to be paid just to Pin. In other words, Pinterest isn’t trying to keep brands or bloggers from making money. It just doesn't want anyone paid for filling up its network with garbage images.

“[Pinterest] will be a tremendous type of ad unit—truly based on your interests as a person,” Gupta said. “In a traditional demographic based ad, I might give you an ad for camping equipment because you’re 25 to 35 and male. But on Pinterest, I’d advertise it because you’re pinning a lot of camping equipment. I don’t care that you’re actually 55. I know you’ll be a buyer.”

It’s clear that Pinterest is simply trying to keep its content authentic, not transactional. But when you’re weighing that against a billion dollar valuation, the company has to move carefully.

Why are they known as Gen C? Because they thrive on Connection, Community, Creation and Curation; they’re engaged and they want their voices to be heard. They’re not a generation in the traditional sense – about 65% of Gen C are under 35, but regardless of how old they are, they’re the sort of mavens who shape opinion and lead thought. Put simply, Gen C isn’t a quirk of when or where you were born; it’s a way of life.

59% say the internet is their main source of entertainment and 38% turn to their phone first when they want to be entertained, with 66% spending the same amount of time or more time watching online videos compared to TV. They haven’t abandoned traditional TV viewing altogether, but they have augmented it with shares, ‘likes’, +1s, comments and retweets, all of which add to the first screen viewing experience.

The act of creating has become second nature to Gen C, but they’re selective, only adding something when they think it’s relevant and they can have an impact. Eighty-three percent of Gen C have posted a picture they took but only 42% post pictures every week, while 65% have uploaded a video they created, but only 25% upload videos every week.

Facebook's Newsfeed algorithm, formerly called EdgeRank

It's becoming apparent that there's a still a misconception in some circles around the idea that Facebook is an agnostic platform—akin to a public plaza—that doesn't systematically curate the user experience. Indeed, it's become safe to say that the Menlo Park, Calif.-based digital giant is tweaking its algorithm to highlight content in a fashion that's not unlike a newspaper or magazine's online presence.

just as Google has reworked its search algorithm over the years to the chagrin of SEO marketers, Facebook's maneuvers are now making publishers rethink their Newsfeed strategies. Whether more ad spend is the result of this thought process remains to be seen.