The phrase “content curator” was one I had to define in the glossary of my book. It seems now that content curator is an idea that others are writing about as well.
RJ Jacquez, Adobe product evangelist, tweeted a link to an article about Content Curation on the site Social Media Today titled “Manifesto for the Content Curator,” written By Rohit Bhargrava. In it, he describes his definition of a content curator: “A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online.”
Photo courtesy ingorr on flickr
I think that professional writers and technical writers should consider a move towards this role. We already search for and find the best content, sift through loads of content, discard poor content, and publish the most worthy content whenever a software release goes out. This description also sounds like something a content strategist would do as part of their analysis of the content.
What I found fascinating after the article had been out a few days was to read one of the comments, where the commentor seemed to think that tasks related to content curation should be automated. He referenced two sites that curate content by classifying it and rating it, mahalo.com and oneforty.com. He saw content curation as a great opportunity for software developers and entrepreneurs.
What do you think? I’m guessing my blog’s audience would protest mightily. Do you believe that content curation can be done by algorithms of rating and relevancy? Or should this job be reserved for specialists?
