Saturday, 13 October 2012

Are you curious about content curation?


People love to collect things. They collect stamps, postcards, coins, matchboxes, newspaper clippings, photographs, obituary notes, etc. The list is endless. Collecting has always been a kind of experience that demands interest and skill for selection, evaluation and classification. In the age of Internet when digital content disappears fast, some websites allow users to become content curators and save what they like.

Most of us use social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc., and every day come across digital content in the forms of pictures, tweets, FB updates, blog posts, articles and web links. Content on the Internet is short-lived. If you had read an update on Facebook a few months ago and want to read it again, it becomes nearly impossible to find it again.

In the information age, we are loaded with digital content. Some of this digital content we find useful and want to keep in our archives. Collecting digital information is becoming increasingly popular among Internet users because it makes  it easy for them to refer to the content they like and find useful. It is like sorting out information from Internet for study and reference.

Users have two options. First: They can download the desired content and save it in their external hard drives. Second: Use the services of the websites that provide content curation. A few websites such as Scoop.it  and others provide Internet users with a service by which they can save  the desired digital content in their accounts. The service is becoming popular because you can save even an update on Tweeter in your account.

Content curation is a collection of articles, pictures, web links, videos and other content on a website. People tend to collect content on the web for future reference or for research. An online advertisement of Scoop.it shows a person, Jack, who is passionate about the electric guitar and has a huge content  collection in the form of web links, articles, You Tube videos, etc., but no one has any idea about his hard work and passion. He opens an account on the website, saves the digital content of his choice and shares them with others.

Pinterest.com is a website that enables users to pin pictures they like on Internet on virtual boards and share them with their friends. The site allows users to find, classify and share images of their interest. Users can pin pictures on virtual boards under different categories. Reddit.com is a website on which users can share news of their interest with other users. The website allows users to rate the news items they like. Some other content curation websites and tools are Strawberryj.am, Curata, Faveous, Delicious, Inboud.org, Hackernews, etc.

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