Thursday, October 20, 2011

Curation is good, aggregation is better

There is a lot of content out there today. I mean tons. So much that your face will melt. With all that content there is a belief that someone out there needs organize it.  Google took a stab at it with search. They succeed for a time.  Facebook is succeeding for now. But folks want more...

Within the internet community a buzz is brewing... we need curation! Someone, anyone, please tell me what the hell all this information means! What do I need to know! Help!

Lots of different sites are taking the stab at curation. What used to be the realm of news women is now problem for all of us. We're all fighting to figure out what is going to be the headline of my own daily
paper? What is the most important news of the day?  Sure we find sites that bring us their headlines but do we trust them? Are they giving us regurgitated news?

For businesses no one is winning on curation. The internet is littered with tiny, little sites all trying to curate smaller and smaller nitches of news. What wins on the internet (so far) is aggregation.  Taking in as much content as you possibly can and letting folks find what they want.  The best sites start with the vision of ALL:
Google wants to organize all the worlds information.
Facebook wants to organize all your friends.
Amazon started with all the books and now wants to sell you all things.
The New York Times sells "All the news that is fit to print".. See the problem there? How do you define fit? What if they just went to all the news!

Get into aggregation and the all business. 

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