

In the Information Age, Curators are King - yotamros
http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/in-the-information-age-curators-are-king/

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EwanG
It is interesting what things are, and are not, successfully "curated" on the
net. For example, way back in the mid-90's when Compuserve was king I ran (for
about a year) a paid online magazine for Science Fiction ("Radius" in case you
ever ran across it). Because it was online (Win HLP files and in later issues
this new fangled HTML stuff), folks heard about it fairly quickly. Because it
actually paid a professional rate (3 cents a word, good luck getting even THAT
now), I was quickly innundated. So much so that after a year I gave it up just
as it was starting to break even. Why? Because I had gone through so much
DRECK that I couldn't even read the good stuff anymore without noticing the
problems I got from even writers who had been in Asimov's and Analog. It would
take almost three years before I could convince myself to read a page of SF
again.

Bringing this back around to my "point", I find it interesting that you don't
have a "Quora" or "Earbits" of online fiction, let alone Science Fiction
anywhere. I wonder if that's because there are more people who listen to music
than who read... or some other problem? Or maybe it's just that my experience
still is the average one, and because you need talent to pick up a guitar and
get out even a chord, and not so much to write, perhaps there's just so MUCH
noise versus signal in writing that you can't curate it successfully (short of
being a traditional publisher, and we all know how well they are doing these
days).

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MartinCron
When I worked on crowd-based duration stuff at the Cheezburger Network, we
noticed that long-form content (video, even 5-panel comics) were much harder
to crowd-curate than single pictures. I am sure that even short Sci-Fi stories
have the same problem.

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petercooper
This article only talks about crowd curation, yet curation by an individual is
even more effective and important nowadays (despite being under the radar
compared to "social" sites).

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yotamros
I used Earbits as an example for curation by an individual.

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petercooper
Yeah, I saw " _We have a team of musicians who listen to each and every song
before adding it to the rotation_ " but assumed that was just a smaller
example of a "crowd." Or is each team member getting the final say on
individual tracks (e.g. individual curators) rather than it being a group
decision?

~~~
yotamros
Yeah, each member is in charge of a their own music genre; rock, hip-hop,
electronic, etc. When in doubt we consult each other.

~~~
shii
Until you all get better and _more_ curated metal, this is a no show for me
and the huge metal fanbase you all should be targeting. To click on Metal and
have one channel 'All Metal' is pretty bad. Do you all need curators in this
field?

~~~
yotamros
We are currently looking for the right candidate.

