Our beloved internet never sleeps, never forgets. Worse, people often don’t understand our intents or make wrong assumptions about us. We may assume a curator approves of the content of every article he shares, for example. As a beginner on the web, I’ve been misled like this myself. Or, we may make mistakes with the… Continue reading How To Share Online Without Worrying About Reputation
Context-free content: new challenges for publishers
Publishers used to control the way content was experienced. Designers read and put content in tailored layouts. Content was produced and laid out for consumption on paper and later on desktop computers. The experience could be controlled but the content landscape is changing. First, an ever expanding portion of audiences access content through mobile devices.… Continue reading Context-free content: new challenges for publishers
Use the Editor’s Note to Tell Your Paper’s Story
Curators show who they are by exposing what they care about, what they consider worthy of other people’s attention. We use stories as currency in the attention economy: picking the best of them and passing them along.We manage a platform of stories. Yet, it seems we’re not storytellers ourselves. Or when we are, we separate… Continue reading Use the Editor’s Note to Tell Your Paper’s Story
Presenting Pearls: Stakes of Content Discovery
Users of fast growing services face challenges discovering relevant content. To address these challenges is hard because relevance is an ever evolving concept which depends on the context. When the user has a clear goal or specific question, relevance is straight forward: that’s how we got search engines. But it is less obvious to address… Continue reading Presenting Pearls: Stakes of Content Discovery
How to Select Only What You Need and Leave the Rest
“Information Gluttony”, a previous post, provoked interesting reactions among social media enthusiasts and editors. The need to become more picky is widely felt. Jan Gordon wrote: I think this is most important for all of us, continually refining our ability to select only what we need and leave the rest. Today everyone is a publisher and… Continue reading How to Select Only What You Need and Leave the Rest
Content Rivers and Information Gluttony
As the festive season was drawing to a close, I –like a large portion of the online population– became concerned about ending the cycle of over-eating. The sense of satiety is easy to numb and hard to get back. It is not only true for food but also for content. Non-physical items can lead to… Continue reading Content Rivers and Information Gluttony
The limits of automation and the curator’s role
Frank posted earlier about Popping the Filter Bubble, arguing that there wasn’t a real problem. Although, as he argues, the concerns about the filter bubble are framed as a conflict to sell the idea, it doesn’t mean the filter bubble is not a real and potentially problematic phenomenon. As he shows using the example of… Continue reading The limits of automation and the curator’s role
Storytelling lessons from “A Song of Ice And Fire”
Late as I’ve come to George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice And Fire” book series, I can’t put the books down now. They’re well-written and engaging. Engagement is — of course — the paramour of social media. If we can understand how to drive engagement over such long pieces of writing, we will become better online storytellers.… Continue reading Storytelling lessons from “A Song of Ice And Fire”
Report and Curate With the Same Passion
Recently, I wrote about the focus on original reporting that online magazines such as Salon.com and Gawker have decided to develop. According to this article by David Skok, these changes in editorial strategies are normal and have historical precedents: TIME magazine went through a similar transformation.Skok, therefore, concludes that “the aggregators of today will be the… Continue reading Report and Curate With the Same Passion
On or Off? How to Make Comments Work for You
I was prompted to think about the costs and value of comments after reading a post about the latest changes made to Gawker’s comment management system in which Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, laments the poor state of comments sections. Engagement is difficult to get and even more difficult to keep. Whether you get no comments at all… Continue reading On or Off? How to Make Comments Work for You