The theory goes that more people will abandon blogging and other ways of producing content in favour of becoming virtual guides to these sources. Twitter even encourages this sort of behaviour by only providing you 140 characters to provide just a sentence or a link & comment.
Well, quite frankly, this sucks! (there I said it!)
- Has nobody ever heard the phrase “too many chiefs and not enough Indians”?
- Why is pointing at content better than producing it?
- Have we really reached an online pinnacle where everyone now needs to go from becoming a journalist to an editor?
- Does the world really need a plethora of people saying “check this out”, rather than “I think this”?
- Is this really the evolution of social media, where the citizen blogger transitions to the citizen news signpost?
Hopefully there is still a place for blogging and the publication of original, thought-provoking content that develops ideas and challenges existing perspectives.
4 comments:
I agree witht he spirit of what you're saying, except I think it's a bit subtler. The whole curation thing is in some ways a reaction to the explosion of undifferentiated content produced by the first wave of the web. We're in a phase now during which we'll refine our tools for finding good stuff - some people are already building big personal profiles because they're great curators (editors, even!). They'll become important guides. In the meantime we need to continue to encourage really authentic, challenging CREATION (and preferably outside the big social nets where it can be owned and enclosed). That's the next wave...
Basically I agree. Still, having worked as both a chief (content strategist) and an indian (copy editor), I would maintain that a true "expert" curator would identify "missing" content - and sooner or later start producing that content herself. Also, making a meaningful contribution within 140 characters is an art in itself ...
Steve:
Thanks for your comment. You're right of course.... however I fear for a time when
1. decent content creators give up because they don't have the traffic (e.g. they aren't great curators themselves)
2. content becomes more "me too", pushing out challenging and thought-provoking comment (aided by "me too" curators all passing the same stories around).
You also make a great point that the big social networks have built a wall around their content, so that it can be saved, subsequently sold-on or monetised in some other way. This will be the biggest battle the web has seen so far.
Esther
Thanks for your comment. However have you not made the assumption that everyone is as skilled as yourself and can take-on both roles(that of content producer and curator)?
On the other hand you are indeed right that the 140 chracter limit of Twitter creates great challenges in itself.
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