I employ tens of thousands of people each year to keep me informed and entertained.

Who am I?

You. Me. Everyone who uses the web.

Collectively, we employ gazillions of content creators and curators to keep our brains fat and happy with all sorts of data.

Information (Photo credit: heathbrandon)

There are job openings for anyone who likes to share great information on topics of interest to others.  And we are so hungry for content with context and meaning, we’re employing more and more people who do a good job of curating the web’s content for us everyday.

When I surf for news and information in the tech space, I employ no less than a dozen different sites at any given time.  I say ” employ” because in return for keeping me informed, I reward those sites with pageviews which they, in turn, sell to advertisers.  I click on some ads, and occasionally buy stuff recommended by the sites I use frequently.  All of this activity on my part constitutes and economy-boosting, job creating role that myself and every web surfer takes part in everyday.  And why do I like these sites?  Mainly because they have great content.  Without a lot of filler.  And a lot of that content is curated or inspired by other content.

They do all the research, gathering, filtering, and writing, and I benefit by saving time and keeping up on things I care about without all the fuss.  That’s value worth paying for.  And I pay with attention, clicks, and dollars.

Who gets hired by us?

The people who do the best job at giving us what we need: the information we’re looking for, minus all the noise, plus some commentary and analysis to put that information into a new context for us to better understand and consume it.

In short, the best job prospects on the internet today lie in content curation.  Some call it good old fashioned news reporting.  Others call it “riffing” on the news and information being created at blistering speeds on all topics of interest.

Whatever you prefer to call it, you are employing people for this job every time you visit a favorite site that always seems to keep you in the loop with the best information or entertainment.

Image via Wikipedia

Have Blog? You’re Hired!

There is a huge need for clarity and focus on the web.  And as more and more content is produced, the need only grows.  We need people with websites and curation tools and we’re willing to pay with our attention, clicks, and dollars.

Skills Required

• A domain of your own or a blog hosted at, say, WordPress or Tumblr.
• A desire to find cool information and share it with others (essentially what we all do on Twitter and Facebook).
• An ability to choose the good from the bad, and curate posts that make your readers happy, loyal followers and brand evangelists.
• Ability to use tools to help you gather and filter information, like CurationSoft.
• Ability to use tools to help you make posts without being a “code jockey” or data entry drone. (Like CurationSoft!)

The skill set may not seem like a big deal, but the effect a person with these skills can have in any market is profound. It can turn you into a valuable earner with one of the coolest jobs on the Planet.

Image via Wikipedia

Training

• A place like Blog Success will get you up to speed on WordPress.
• CurationSoft  will give you everything you need to curate like a pro, and doesn’t even require a big manual.

Again, just because it sounds too easy to be of value, and therefore, doesn’t sound like it could turn into a good paying gig, doesn’t mean it isn’t one of the most attractive and effective money earning businesses on the web today. It certainly is!

Do you like sharing great stuff with your followers on social networks or on your blog?

Here’s your chance to to get a little credit for all the digging and linking you do for friends and followers!  One of the guys behind this contest is Marty Smith, who is on a mission to educate everyone he can about curation and what he sees as the future of web publishing.  (We do too!)

From the contest page:

Quality content is so abundant a new skill is being honed. Content Curation uses new tools such as Scoop.it, Hunch, Pinterest and “old” tools such as blogs, email and content management systems (CMS) to organize the web’s boundless content around important themes. Our contest seeks to thank hard working content curators, identify some of the top content curators helping to define this exciting new skill set and develop an annual content curation event.

10 winners will chosen, with first and second places getting an iPad or a Kindle Fire, respectively.  Every winner gets a profile on the site as one of the “best curators of 2011.”

All you have to do to enter is start submitting links and showing off how good you are at curating what’s news, interesting, funny, informative, or just plain neato!

Curation Contest Entry and Details

We stumbled upon a fantastic review of CurationSoft with results posted that demonstrate what this incredible software can do for your traffic.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you Kate’s traffic success is because I’m personally amazed at the huge traffic increase it’s given her. I thought it might help a bit, but in a month her visitors have more than quadrupled. And get this – she hasn’t added any new articles, and she’s not done any backlinking. -Phil Wiley

On Phil’s CurationSoft review post, he shows the traffic increases and gives his impressions of how quickly his daughter saw improvement in traffic levels.

(To see the results, click the graphic below!)

The more people you have in your social circles, the more people are exposed to your pages in search.

You’ve likely seen the changes in Google’s SERPS over the last several months as they’ve adopted and adapted to social media signals and networks of friends.  In searches you can see how friends in your network have interacted with pages.

It is a very different thing than what you see when you are not logged in to Google or using an incognito window.  The latest addition is “Search Plus Your World.”  Do a search on your own name and, if you are even moderately active on Google+, you’ll see something that really doesn’t look at all like the old search results.

The bottom line is this:  when people use Google Search, and you’ve circled them on Google+, you can find all kinds of information related to them and you.

“Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”  Search Plus

Remember when you were told that prospects need to hear a message up to 7 times before they take action, on average?  With social, you can now reach out and touch people multiple times by doing nothing more than making friends and remaining active.

Other ways Google uses social to put you and your followers in touch through search…

How to Use Google+ Direct Connect for SEO – Be On Page 1 Blog

beonpage1blog.com1/1/12

How to Use the Google+ Direct Connect Function. Every week, a representative from Black Box Social Media, LLC, will be sharing with readers and fans of Brian Horn how to use social media in order to improve SEO for their website. No question that … People can use Google+ Direct Connect feature to navigate to a Google+ Page from Google search, by simply typing the keyword prefixed with “+” symbol. For example, if you type +Pepsi, you could be taken directly to …

What Google Search plus Your World means for the Social Media …

www.radian6.com1/11/12

And since every Google product you use is connected to your account, Google could feasibly enable us to search within our own Google docs, Calendar events, Music library, Contacts, Gmail messages and more. In essence …

Social Search Part 1 – Connect All the Accounts – 1500 Word MTU

blog.inuus.com1/10/12

1: Connect All the Accounts. Social search uses your Google identity plus your extended social graph to help you find personalized content. The extended social graph is found via links everyone adds to their Google+ profile. …

Google Search gets more 'Social and Personal'

www.buzzom.com1/11/12

Google's Social network Google+ might not help the company make it big in the world of social networking, considering most of us still use Facebook more than Google+, to connect with friends and family. However, Google+ …

New Feature: Support for old-school Atom Feeds. This addition allows you to use your Google Alerts in the RSS feed section of CurationSoft

Drag & Drop Confusion: We’ve noticed that more and more support tickets are coming in with drag and drop issues. It’s not that the feature is broken but it needs to work better. As a response, we made sure the only draggable area is where the drag icon is available. Before you could drag the entire item but it wouldn’t drop. It was confusing. We believe this small change will cut down on confusion and provide you a better experience.

OPML import:  As reported earlier this week, you can now import as many RSS feeds you want with an OPML import function.

Clay Johnson

In his review of “The Information Diet,” by Clay Johnson, David Eaves examines the pain and suffering that too much junk information can cause.  And how he, as a “knowledge worker,” should be very good at managing information.  But he has the same problem that all of us face.  Being on a diet sucks.

“What makes The Information Diet compelling is that Johnson embraces the concerns we have about the world of information overload – from those raised by New York Magazine authors and celebrated pundits to the challenges we all feel on a day to day basis – and offers the best analysis to date of its causes, and what we can do about it. ” David Eaves “Not Brain Candy: A Review of The Information Diet by Clay Johnson“

For me, reading a lot of different ideas and opinions about information overload points to the coming trend in mass curation.  As anyone who keeps up with the latest tools and tricks to manage information knows, everyone seems to be grappling with overload.  And this means that everyone is on the lookout for places on the web that can save them time by being a quality filter for the topics that interest them.

In short, the business of curation across the range of popular and niche topics, is set to explode.

Curation is already employed heavily by most serious news and blog sites.  It has to be if they are to keep up with their competition.  But it is also essential for readers to find good sources of quality links and information where they don’t have to search, research, and glean meaning from a noisy web.

Those who provide such a service to their target market will continue to profit greatly from it.  If entire books are being written about how to deal with information overload, there’s no longer much need to debate whether or not curation would be a good priority for content marketers.

People are spread pretty thin these days between social networks and email.  And, obviously, they love to flock to sites that perform the valuable service of curation to save them precious time.  In every corner of the web, right now, there is an opportunity to create a loyal following, great traffic, and great rankings by curating and becoming the chosen filter for readers.

Great news for those who have been asking about importing your feeds from, say, Google Reader.  Now you can!

Instructions:

1.  You should have seen an update if you’ve opened CurationSoft in the last few hours (it’s fresh!)

2.  Once the update is done, you’re good to go for importing your OPML file.

3.  In Google Reader, for instance, grab your OPML file by clicking on the gear in the top right corner and going to “Settings.”

4.  Once in Settings click on the Import/Export tab.

5.  Click on the Download link for “Your subscriptions.”

6.  You now have the file you need with all your RSS subscription information in it.

7.  Open CurationSoft and click the RSS button in the top right corner.

8.  Click on Import OPML button in the bottom left of the RSS feeds window that pops up.  (Only visible if you are running the latest version of CurationSoft.)

9.  Choose the OPML file you’ve just downloaded from Google Reader, and all your feeds will be imported into CurationSoft.

Now you have every feed you track in Google Reader at your fingertips inside CurationSoft!

Martin Smith has made the most impassioned case for curation I’ve seen to date.  While most experts talk about the topic of curation in an almost clinical sense, this guy is… well, freakin’ excited about it!

“I’ve seen tornadoes roar up on dusty Texas plains. I’ve run from a black storm’s vengeance, furry and terror. No Texas tornado has anything over the content storm heading at each and every one of us.”

“Curation, the process of separating content wheat from chafe, will be the next web revolution.”

and

“If Web 1.0 was about online access and Web 2.0 is about social nets Web 3.0 will be coring down to content that really matters.”

These quotes are from Marty’s blog “Scent Trail.”  I like this guy!  :)  Thanks to Robin Good for putting Marty on my radar.

Image by marcopako ? via Flickr

Apple has put forth some design ideas for Samsung to help the company steer clear of Apple’s patent infringement claims. How nice of Apple!

Apparently, Apple thinks the rectangle belongs to them. So they suggest Samsung stay away from that shape in their tablets and phones. Along with the novelty of “rounded corners.”

Probably the best idea Apple offered to Samsung was to clutter up their interface. This would be a big difference between the two companies and, I’m sure, would help Samsung’s sales a great deal.

From Slash Gear:  ”Tablets should also not be rectangular or not have rounded corners. They should have thick frames with a front surface that doesn’t lie entirely flat. Also, the profiles should not be thin and the interface should have a cluttered appearance.”

To sum up, Apple basically gave Samsung the plans for going out of business. Or creating the world’s first triangular tablet with a confusing user interface and no rounded corners.

Here’s what the web is saying:

What does it take to stop an Apple lawsuit? Build a horrible device …

androidcommunity.com12/3/11

As part of Apple’s patent case against Samsung in the US, it couldn’t just simply object to the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Apple had … What does it take to stop an Apple lawsuit? … Apple are saying anything rectangular is an iPad copy. …

Apple claims rectangles, round corners and flat black screens are …

www.phonesreview.co.uk12/5/11

You are no doubt aware Apple has been in legal conflict with Samsung for god knows how long over the design of Samsung products that Apple claims looks and feels like Apple products and Apple is attempting to get …

NewsDaily: Insight: Apple vs Samsung lawsuit full of secret combat

www.newsdaily.com12/1/11

The biggest legal battle for the technology industry is playing out in a federal court in Silicon Valley, where Apple is trying to stop Samsung from selling Galaxy phones and tablets in the United States.

Whoops! Apple, Samsung secrets leak from court document – CNET

news.google.com

Whoops! Apple, Samsung secrets leak from court documentCNETFor tablets, Apple suggested thicker frames around the screen, a front surface that isn’t entirely flat, a thicker design, and similarly, no rectangle design. There is no end in sight to the …

Apple’s Worldwide War on Samsung and Android – ZDNet (blog)

news.google.com

ZDNet (blog)Apple’s Worldwide War on Samsung and AndroidZDNet (blog)You write all the above just to show a square rectangular glass panel and claim that this was patent infrigement? Where is the Samsung square app icon and icon dock UI design that yo …

And More…

• Apple to Samsung: Don’t Make Thin or Rectangular Tablets or Smartphones (pcworld.com)

This was a fun interview.  Gina and Ronda do a really great job on their Blog Talk Radio show every week and I was honored to be their guest today.

We talked about the basics of curation along with some cool tips on how to be a great curator.  It’s worth a listen even if you have been curating as a content marketing strategy for some time.