Book Review – Curation Nation

A concept that is fairly new to me is Content Curation. I was introduced to the concept by Curata I am currently a reseller of their awesome product (If you have any questions feel free to contact me) . I have been trying to explain the concept to many of my prospective clients and I have found many ways to break down Content Curation so that anyone can understand it.

While at SXSW, I was waiting in line to get Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions (Amazon Affiliate Link)
autographed by Guy Kawasaki himself, I had a quick chat with Steven Rosenbaum  @magnify author of Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators(Amazon Affiliate Link). He gave me a brochure and spoke about his book I quickly added Curation Nation to my books to buy list. Weeks later I got contacted by Julia (Marketing Manager of McGraw Hill) requesting me if I could review this book which I gladly accepted since I was planning to buy Curation Nation in the future.

After receiving the complimentary copy of “Curation Nation” I quickly dove into it to read what other ideas I could learn about content curation inorder to facilitate the process of explaining curation and have potential clients understand the concept.

Overall the most interesting points where the concepts of how advertisers had to create big, expensive guesses in the past and how now they can be more precies.

Curation is more of an Idea than technology. The book gives you some history on where the concept of Content Curation originated,  who was the first curator of text, and how the birth of cable tv gave rise to curation. It also mentions a few curators on the rise such as the Huffington Post. The part I can relate to the most is the consumer conversations that are curated and have had a large impact such as the famous Dell Hell and Comcast must Die campaigns.

The concept that really took me for a ride was seeing how Ludacris,one of my favorite music artists, is also a content curator.

Another idea that I encountered was how broadcasting can be for everyone and now with tools like Facebook and Twitter you can increase your reach even further. You no longer need a huge organization or large amounts of money to get your message projected and shared. Steven states that Having Access to a Publishing Outlet won’t be the deciding Factor.

He quotes journalist and well known blogger Jeff Jarvis, who provides an explanation in the differences between Aggregation & Curation which ends up being Prioritization.

Another unique mention is how brands can Curate their customers I guess you are going to have to read “Curation Nation” to understand this a bit further.

Some individuals think that aggregators are like vampires but just like Steven, I agree with the opposite. There is an Attention Shortage. He explains how Rupert Murdoch accuses people who curate as crooks and Mark Cuban calls them vampires. The curious part is that both have made part or most of their wealth from Curating content.

It also states the 3 main business perspectives for curating are publishing, advertising, and syndication. The key part of understanding the business perspectives is making sure you identify the 3 sources of content:

• Content You Make
• Content Your Visitors Make
• Content You Contract Others to Create for Your Site

The best advice that goes in line with what I tell my peers and clients is that if you are going to set up a content strategy you need to make these next two items a priority:

• Are you a content source I can trust?
• Content is not to Fill up a website or Space

The topics I wish he could have recommended a bit more was where he related Finance, Curation, and Privacy. Where he simplifies Privacy to be binary you either share it or you don’t. On the finance side Steven and I agree that Consumer have all they power they need. It is just a matter of time before we all collaborate using the correct tools.

I just Curated some of the key points of the book but there are many more that I left out.

Any more questions on Content Curation?

Disclosure: I received a Complimentary copy of  “Curation Nation” but I don’t feel that this influenced the writing of this post in any way.