
Human Curation Is Back - tambourine_man
http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/07/05/human-curation-is-back/
======
petercooper
Curation is my entire business and this article only casually mentions what I
think is the most important point about why human curation works so well:
trust. And, in particular, trust when things get _weird_.

When there's a clearly identified brand or person standing behind curation, it
has a major effect on the audience and their response, versus a "blameless"
automated job. Humans explicitly trust or distrust other humans, whereas trust
in software or algorithms is either implicit or of dubious nature.

If I subscribe to a magazine, listen to a radio station, or attend a festival
curated by a known figurehead, group of people, or a brand like "The New York
Times", that I trust, I know things that I experience that are out of my
comfort zone were likely designed to be there. If a news recommendation
algorithm throws up something weird (and they always do, alas), I have no idea
if it was being smart or just making a mistake.

~~~
emptybits
_I have no idea if it was being smart or just making a mistake._

When does a bold recommendation become a mistake? Can human recommendations be
mistakes? (Both algorithmic and human recommendations are based on models,
assumptions, and partial information.)

~~~
derefr
I would think, by strict definition, a bold recommendation would be one you
doubt you'll like but that turns out well, and a mistaken recommendation would
be one that turns out poorly. In other words, the value of a recommendation is
not something you can evaluate at the time, before following the
recommendation; instead, it's a measure of regret. (And by that vein, yes,
human recommendations can totally be mistakes, too.)

On the other hand, people _do_ tend to try to filter on the recommendations
themselves before knowing their regret-value. People will subconsciously
multiply the likelihood that something was a "bold recommendation made by
design" by the relative status of the recommender.

Celebrities, leaders in your industry, people you're attracted to, etc. can
get away with recommending all sorts of crazy things. Just because of their
source, these things seem much less crazy. And this doesn't seem to correlate
at all with how well they would know you or your tastes as an individual. Kind
of a mysterious behavior, though it reeks of evo-psych tribal status dynamics
stuff.

------
alexophile
I don't think human curation is "back" per se. There's just a difference in
expectations.

When I listen to a radio show or a new playlist from a friend, I have a
general understanding of their tastes and the taste of the audience that has
elected to receive these recommendations. Arguably, the biggest thing here is
that decision - you've subscribed to this person's taste and you are
predisposed towards justifying that decision.

With a recommendation algorithm, it is reaching much higher, trying to give
you personal recommendations. The relationship is more confrontational. I'm
much more inclined to think "why this" when given an algorithmic
recommendation, trying to reverse engineer it, instead of trusting a person's
taste in curating a selection based on much broader criteria.

------
morgante
> If it’s a good idea to use human curators to navigate 30 million “songs”,
> how about applying human curation to help the customer find his or her way
> through the 1.5M apps in the Apple App Store?

Isn't the App Store already heavily curated? First there's the human curation
step of reviewing apps for acceptance into the store, which weeds out the
total junk.

Then there are dozens of hand-picked lists of apps such as "Summer Road Trip"
or "Stargazing."

In fact, finding favor with the App Store Editors is one of the few well-known
paths to indie app development success.

------
scelerat
Algorithmic curation is in fact very good at analyzing things you like or
habitually listen to, watch, read, or buy, and present you with other things
you may like.

In the case of Apple Music, the curation is there primarily to take advantage
of the trust factor to push product for business partners. It's not about
exposing exemplary art, or presenting you music to your particular taste.

~~~
gdubs
Everyone's experience will vary, but what has been suggested to me so far from
Apple Music has been very relevant to my tastes. I definitely don't feel like
I'm being pushed content to satisfy their business partners -- to the extent
that every label and artist on the service is a "business partner."

Of course, Beats One is going to be more mainstream -- it aims to be a radio
station in very much the traditional model, complete with top twenty segments
-- but I've even found that station interesting at times, discovering some
Nigerian music, for instance.

Yesterday I was suggested a mix of Autechre and Squarepusher to help me get
through my afternoon's work -- which it actually did. The other day I was
suggested the Beach Boys Smile sessions and over a hundred Smashing Pumpkins
B-sides -- so, there's a lot of variety and it all feels relevant to me. I'm
not getting Taylor Swift thrust on me, and so far I don't get the sense that
corporate partners have some quota that I'm there to fill.

------
DanBC
1) app search is so broken that I would pay[1] money to access a decently
curated list. I'd love for something like GNKSA to exist but for apps that
have demo / lite versions; are sold for a price; have limited sensible iaps;
etc. or maybe there exists a subreddit for this?

2) I buy many books for my child. Amazon is pretty hopeless at recommending
books to me, even though I've seeded it with knowledge of the books I've
bought. So I turn to human curation: the Kate Greenaway medal focuses on
excellent illustration in books for children. That list is an excellent source
for books. Then one or two degrees of separation (eg, other books the
illustrator has worked on, or other books the author of the winning book has
written) get you hundreds of excellent books. Someone scraping this list and
using affiliate links could probably make a bit of passive income.

~~~
steve19
I find amazon excellent. Either by just looking at books I like and seeing
what other people have purchased, or creating a wishlist and it suggesting new
books.

Apps are indeed terrible. The algorithms are shit because people buy shit, so
they suggest shit. Curated apps stores have been tried (on Android) and there
are blogs about apps. The problem is that most money is made from these
terrible freemium games that are no better than slot machines. So the curators
get paid off, or end up promoting the stuff people want (slot machine-like
shit)

~~~
minthd
On the same note, jinni.com before it closed was excellent at recommending
movies.

------
philip1209
This makes me think about the YC company Dating Ring, which just participated
in a podcast season about their business. The denouement turned out to be that
their curated dating did not scale, so they pivoted to being a lifestyle
business. It makes me wonder whether curation is best when many canonical
"good enough" solutions exist, but not when people try to seek the "best" from
a set.

[http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/](http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/)

------
japaget
Note that one of the authors (Jean-Louis Gassée) was in charge of Macintosh
development at Apple in the 1980s, then left to head up Be Inc., the
developers of the BeOS operating system.

~~~
npalli
Also note what Steve Jobs thought of Gassée

“Jean-Louis Gassée is evil,” [Steve Jobs] snapped. “I don’t say that about
many people, but he is evil.”

Brent Schlender. “Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart
Into a Visionary Leader.”

~~~
abawany
Why would you accept this statement without any context, even if it comes from
Steve Jobs? What makes this person evil?

~~~
npalli
Lol. Do I look like I'm Steve Jobs? So what makes you think that __I
__personally think Gassée is evil. I have no opinion on Gassée, thought it was
interesting to report the Jobs ' quote since the original comment talked about
Gassée's role at Apple.

~~~
abawany
I stated my point badly. I never assumed you that you were Steve Jobs but I
shouldn't have assumed belief. The original commenter I felt gave people
context on Gassée's background while your comment, in my opinion, contained a
negative assertion with no context.

------
archagon
I can get behind the corporate curation of apps, which are essentially just
tools. However, the idea that a corporation can curate something like _music_
seems very arrogant to me. Music is art. Even if you cut out the crappy 90% as
per Sturgeon's law, the remaining 10% has so much variation that you couldn't
possibly pick out "the best" to any measurable degree — especially when you
consider the fact that, historically speaking, most of the best (read: most
influential) art pushed the boundary of the medium in some way. _Maybe_ it's
possible to find the slice of music that most people would enjoy listening to,
but that's so music business-y it makes me sick.

~~~
jameshart
Corporations have been arrogantly curating music for a century now. Didn't
stop jazz, hip-hop, punk, or electronica developing, thriving, being sucked
into the corporate curation machine, and then spawning a dozen rebellious
reactions outside it.

Curation doesn't mean 'have someone pick out the top ten best'. Curation means
things like 'have someone knowledgeable pick out fifty underappreciated
forgotten masterpieces'.

Also, 'apps' includes 'games', not just tools, and you could replace the word
'music' in your rant with 'videogame' pretty easily.

~~~
slfnflctd
> Curation means things like 'have someone knowledgeable pick out fifty
> underappreciated forgotten masterpieces'

Ideally, this is how it should be, and can be. Tastemakers have been effective
for a long time and will continue to be, it's a fuzzy thing they do.

I recently started listening to an internet radio service curated by humans
(after spending years exclusively on one with selections done by algorithm)--
it could be my imagination, but so far the overall quality seems better.

~~~
soylentcola
I've been listening to streaming radio for over 15 years now and to this day,
none of the algorithm-based services can compare to my list of Shoutcast
bookmarks.

I always wonder how things would've played out if anyone did a better job of
promoting such things (although I guess there's not much money to be made in
promoting tens of thousands of small-time DJs and music enthusiasts who are
doing the streaming).

The whole Apple music streaming thing made me do a double take because they're
basically offering a much smaller set of the kinds of stations that have been
freely streaming for years.

Streaming mp3 like shoutcast/icecast streams will play in just about any
mobile or desktop media player. They can be bookmarked, creating your own
custom "radio dial" of stations you personally like. And the variety of music
is astounding. I've got maybe 15 or 20 stations that are programmed by people
that consistently expose me to new and interesting music along with stuff I
already like. I get to enjoy those simple pleasures like realizing the common
thread between the last 3 or 4 songs played since there's a real human DJ
behind the playlist. And I can access them anywhere I could access Pandora or
Spotify.

------
sparkzilla
When someone says they are changing the algorithm of a news feed or search
engine page it's never to benefit the reader, it's always to benefit the
advertiser. It's a lazy way of fitting the advertiser to the feed rather than
letting the user decide what they want, and then fitting the advertiser to the
users' preferences.

I spend a lot of time curating news (see bio). It's not enough to go out and
just aggregate information on a topic. I see so many products that scan the
web for news and then present them in a list. Even Google does this,
presenting a list of blue links with no context. There's a news article, then
a tweet, then a YouTube video. but what does it mean? The reader is required
to make some mental sense of it all. The reader is required to build the
story. The challenge IMHO is to build an intermediate stage of human curators
who can compile data that can then be built up into a story that is meaningful
to humans.

~~~
teaneedz
Completely agree. Algos have limits and in almost every _practical_
application that they touch my life, require a human to make sense of with
_understanding_.

