Authors or Curators: Who Will Be More Valuable in the Future?

Authors or Curators: Who Will Be More Valuable in the Future?

The great debate between original and curated content has been a hot topic in the age of social media. Today, so much content is produced at such a rapid rate that the web has become a realm of tastemakers.

Tools like Storify make it easy to archive on Twitter, a site notorious for breaking news and real-time discussion. Tastemakers also help with discovery, but without the content creators, it would be difficult for anyone to curate in the first place.

So who is more valuable in the future: the ones who create original content, or those who filter through the noise to curate the most valuable content?

SEE ALSO: Storify Reimagines Interactive Stories With Element Sharing

At this year’s Mashable Connect conference at Disney World, Mashable‘s chief technology officer Robyn Peterson caught up with Storify co-founder Burt Herman backstage. Here’s what Herman had to say about who will have more clout in the future.

More About: content creation, content curation, content discovery, features, mashable connect, Storify, Twitter, Video

For more Social Media coverage:


Facebook IPO: Did Twitter Crowdsourcing Just Give Us the Closing Price?

Facebook IPO: Did Twitter Crowdsourcing Just Give Us the Closing Price?




When you get a lot of smart and interested people together to make a prediction in aggregate, it can be scary accurate. Anyone who has read the James Surowiecki business science classic The Wisdom of Crowds, and a host of corroborating authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, knows that.

So what if you applied that brave new world of expert prediction markets, of crowdsourcing the future, to the Facebook IPO?

That’s what famed investor Chris Sacca wondered aloud on Twitter, and programmer James Proud endeavored to find out. And thus was born Facebookipodayclosingprice.com, Proud even buying the exact URL Sacca had idly requested Tuesday.

By end of day Thursday, it had garnered more than 1,400 predictions, mostly from the Valley’s top luminaries — entrepreneurs, investors, analysts and others who know a thing or two from IPOs. And it was getting up to 20 visitors every second.

Pollsters and prediction market experts will tell you you need more than a thousand inputs for a good aggregate result with a low margin of error. So what did this prediction market come up with? And could you — or Sacca — get very rich in one day by banking on the result?

In theory, yes. Facebook’s launch price Friday morning will be $38. This site is predicting, in aggregate, that the stock will hit $54 by close of market Friday, for a total valuation of $135.7 billion.

Buy enough shares, and that $16 difference would make for a tidy one-day profit.

Of course, prediction markets have never been tested in this kind of circumstance. IPOs are inherently nerve-wracking wild rides. The Twitterati have been known to be wrong before. We certainly won’t be opening our wallets on the basis of this prediction.

But we will be eager to check back in at the closing bell, 4pm ET Friday, to see how close the prediction market came. Join us then!

More About: chris sacca, Facebook, facebook ipo, prediction market, trending, Twitter

For more Social Media coverage:


Incentives for Workers

Incentives for Workers

I’ve just had a moment. And a question answered that I didn’t think to ask: “How will workers by paid?” Of course with money. But how much is enough? And should pay be associated with the tasks assigned? Should workers be paid hourly?

The answer is likely a salary is best – one that exceeds the workers expectations. Then give them autonomy as soon as you can. This way we can avoid poor performance with increased incentives. That’s right, when cognitive skill is required, high incentives result in poor performance. Check it out:

With that said, some questions remain about payments for the not-so-cognitive tasks. And how do we prevent burn-out? The work isn’t that rewarding in itself.

Additional lessons learned here:

A Documentary

A Documentary

Did I mention that last blog post of mine was the first one I’ve done in years? You see, I think it’d be a good opener to a documentary. If the project were a failure, a documentary about the process could still succeed. Also, online video and independent film can help such an endeavor succeed.

The film would provide a new perspective on globalization – a tough conversation worth working through (especially with my brother, Arthur). Interviews with influential tech titans (Pete Corbett, O’Reilly, etc.) would shed light on the realities of technology. Yesterday’s jobs are being replaced with code.

Interviews with public health experts would provide exposure for those organizations (CORE Group, Thousand Days, etc.) and get them interested in the project. International development experts could weigh in on the challenges and provide ideas. We’d essentially conduct research on camera.

And did I mention my wife and I love to travel? What a great excuse to do so, right?

Project Aven

Project Aven

Maybe the project’s name won’t stick, but here I am looking at my two-week old daughter Aven, hoping she grows up in a world that breaks down political and cultural barriers to spread health and prosperity through initiatives like the one I’ve just conceptualized.

I’ve just landed a relationship with Future Fortified, an innovative non-profit that I’d like to pitch my ideas to. I can already visualize the project’s opening day: cool branding, a poor neighborhood (relative to my own), some exposed power lines hanging above the facility. Inside there are aid workers, Internet junkies and hopefully some locals eager to make a better life for themselves.

There are computers, a training center and trained staff eager to get started. In here, foreign companies will find a web worker; for a day, for an hour or for a minute. Those workers will cost far less than other workers with similar skill sets, and other facilities exist that do this sort of thing. But ours will be different.

Project Aven is about plugging into the community. Resources, in the form of money and nutrition supplements come in – happier, healthy families come out. We’ll offer benefits to our most reliable workers: child care, doctors visits and other valuable support. We’ll build a family – a business really – to serve as a model for other similar facilities in developing nations.

20120511-075335.jpg

Tumblr Does Its Own Curating With New Storyboard Project

Tumblr Does Its Own Curating With New Storyboard Project

Aiming to help curate the site’s vast array of content, Tumblr has launched a new initiative called Storyboard, billed as “tales from behind the dashboard.”

The micro-blogging platform and social networking website will be posting regular features from those within the Tumblr community with an interesting story to tell. Whether it’s highlighting content from writers and musicians to animators, scientists and comedians, Storyboard will highlight one new story each day and become a hub for in-depth conversations within its community.

“We could never possibly tell everyone’s story, even if we told 100 stories a day,” Tumblr Editor-in-Chief Chris Mohney said in a video post via Storyboard.Tumblr.com. “But we can help bring people to light that one sector of the community may never encounter through their natural organic reading of Tumblr.”

To kick off the new effort, Tumblr has featured content from former R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, The New York Times, Afghanistan and the design mechanics of the Tumblr Dashboard.

Tumblr is looking for submissions, as well. If you’re interested in submitting a story or idea, post it on Tumblr with the hashtag #storyboard.

“Our editors will monitor the tag and the community’s interactions there, promoting stories that resonate,” Tumblr said on the site. “And if your story really works, we’ll ask to expand it for publication on Storyboard itself.”

In February, Tumblr hired editor-in-chief Chris Mohney, formerly senior vice president of content at BlackBook Media, and executive editor Jessica Bennett, previously a senior writer editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Both Mohney and Bennett will be overseeing the Storyboard project.

Tumblr has grown drastically since its launch in 2007. As of late February 2012, the site boasted more than 46 million blogs and brought in 13.4 million unique visitors each month, according to data from comScore.

What do you think of Tumblr’s new Storyboard initiative? Let us know in the comments.

More About: blogging, BLOGS, Social Media, tumblr

For more Social Media coverage:


Study Says Facebook Privacy Concerns Are on the Rise – Is It Accurate?

Study Says Facebook Privacy Concerns Are on the Rise – Is It Accurate?




Consumer Report’s annual State of the Net study found that people are increasingly concerned with their privacy on Facebook. The report breaks down social privacy into a handful of categories: over-sharing by users, underuse of privacy controls, over-collection of data, over-sharing of data by apps and cyberbullying or harassment.

2,002 online households were surveyed, including 1,340 Facebook users. Based on those numbers, Consumer Reports extrapolated its results upon the rest of Facebook’s 188 million North American users.

The study raises alarms about Facebook’s privacy practices — but does the author do enough to back up his or her claims?


Over-Sharing


4.8 million Facebook users have posted their plans for the day on the site, according to the report’s extrapolation. Consumer Reports suggests that’s a potential tip-off for thieves who can use that information to plan a robbery.

The report was unclear about how many of those 4.8 million users set their location sharing to “friends only,” which would drastically reduce the threat of theft. Jeff Fox, technology editor at Consumer Reports, told Mashable that 10-15% of Facebook users set their sharing to “public,” rather than friends-only. That’s about 500,000 of those 4.8 million location-sharers.

Fox also pointed to a recent story of thieves who robbed a house using information shared on Facebook, but he couldn’t provide statistics indicating whether that’s a common occurrence or an isolated event.

Consumer Reports also said that Facebook users who publicly “like” a page about a disease, such as diabetes, may tip-off insurers who can then deny those users coverage. Fox was unable to cite statistics showing whether that actually happens, however.


Underuse of Privacy Controls


13 million users, says Consumer Reports, either haven’t set or don’t know about Facebook’s privacy tools. However, with 188 million users in the U.S. and Canada, that means more than 90% of users do change their privacy settings from the default.

Facebook has been responding to privacy concerns, albeit not to everyone’s satisfaction. It rolled out broad new privacy changes over the summer of last year.

Information about privacy settings is available on Facebook’s site. Users are expected to set their privacy protection to levels with which they feel comfortable and protected, but some privacy groups call for Facebook to deliver this information more directly and to make the default settings more secure.


Over-Collection of Data


Facebook “collects more data than you may imagine,” warns Consumer Reports, and that’s certainly true. The website keeps tabs on users’ activity both on and off the site, sometimes even if they’re not logged in. Facebook manages this via cookies that follow Internet users who visit sites that embed the ubiquitous “like” button on their pages — an ever-increasing number of websites.

Facebook has said that it uses this information to improve security, but privacy advocates warn that such information could potentially be sold to advertisers — which Facebook denies doing.

However, as Consumer Reports points out, Facebook is planning to release more of the data it stores about users, such as IP addresses and facial recognition patterns.


Over-Collection of Data


Consumer Reports‘ study argues that Facebook users often pay little attention to the permissions they give to third-party apps. All third-party apps on Facebook require users to “opt-in” by granting permission for an app to look at your news feed, update your status, and so on. It’s up to each individual user to pay attention to these permissions and decide if they should continue installing an app.

Some apps, warns the report, can look at users’ information even if they haven’t installed the app themselves. They do this, says Consumer Reports, by accessing information about users from their friends that have the app installed. Such a grab can be prevented through careful modification of privacy settings.

“Even if you have restricted your information to be seen by friends only, a friend who is using a Facebook app could allow your data to be transferred to a third party without your knowledge,” says the report.

Fox was unable to cite any examples of an app which performs this roundabout information grab.


Cyberbullying and Harassment


Consumer Reports says that “problems are on the rise” — 11% of households using Facebook had “trouble” last year, which ranges from a stranger using their login information to online harassment. The report highlights cyberbullying against children, claiming that 800,000 children under 13 had been “harassed or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying on Facebook.”

The report didn’t give exact definitions of “trouble,” “harassment” or “cyberbullying.” Such cases could range from commonplace teasing to more extreme and dangerous forms of social rejection, and it’s impossible to know these details from this study. Fox wasn’t able to clarify the definitions used in Consumer Reports’ survey.


Facebook and Privacy


Consumer Reports’ study shows that privacy is an ever-increasing concern as Facebook and other social media become a more central part of everyday life. However, careful observation of the report raises more questions than it answers. Some observers, including journalist and Internet commentator Jeff Jarvis, label the report as “fear-mongering” that’s harmful to the public’s understanding of social networks.

“My fear is that such fear-mongering will lead to more regulation and a less open and free net,” wrote Jarvis on his blog. “Consumer Reports is not fulfilling its mission to protect us with this campaign. It will hurt us.”

More About: Facebook, privacy, Social Media, trending

For more Social Media coverage:


5 Tips for Great Content Curation

5 Tips for Great Content Curation




Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO of Magnify.net, a real-time video curation engine for publishers, brands, and websites. He’s also the author of Curation Nation.

You’ve heard the buzz word — curation — being thrown around like it’s a gadget we all know how to work. In reality, good content curation isn’t as simple as pushing a share button. It’s actually a combination of finding great content and following some simple best practices on how to successfully share that content.

If you’re a curator looking for some boundaries in what feels like the Wild West, here are five best practices to consider.


1. Be Part of the Content Ecosystem


Be part of the content ecosystem, not just a re-packager of it. Often, people think of themselves as either creators or curators as if these two things are mutually exclusive. What a curator really should do is embrace content as both a maker and an organizer. The most successful curators include sites like The Huffington Post, that embrace the three-legged-stool philosophy of creating some content, inviting visitors to contribute some content, and gathering links and articles from the web. Created, contributed, and collected — the three ‘c’s is a strong content mix that has a measurable impact. Why? Because your visitors don’t want to hunt around the web for related material. Once they find a quality, curated collection, they’ll stay for related offerings.


2. Follow a Schedule


Audiences expect some regularity, and they’ll reward you for it. It doesn’t need to be a schedule that you can’t keep up with. If you want to curate three new links a day, and write one big post a week, that’s a schedule. Make sure to post at the same time each week. This is so readers know when to expect new material from you. Consistency and regularity will also bring you new users, and help you grow a loyal base of members who appreciate your work. A good example of someone who gets why a schedule makes a difference is Jason Hirschhorn via his MediaReDEF newsletter. He never misses a publish date.


3. Embrace Multiple Platforms


It used to be that your audience came to you. Not anymore. Today content consumers get their information on the platform of their choosing. That means you should consider posting short bursts on Tumblr, images on Pinterest, video on YouTube, and community conversations on Facebook. And don’t leave out established sites and publishers. If your audience hangs out on a blog, you may want to offer that publication some guest posts or even a regular column. Essentially, you have to bring your content contributions to wherever your readers may be.


4. Engage and Participate


Having a voice as a curator means more than creating and curating your own work. Make sure you’re giving back by reading others and commenting on their posts. A re-tweet is one of the easiest ways to help build relationships with fellow bloggers and curators. And your followers will appreciate that you’ve pointed them to good content. One word here, I never hit an RT without clicking through to read what I’m recommending. You can also lose followers if you don’t put in the effort to recommend material that you really think merits their attention.


5. Share. Don’t Steal.


Take the time to give attribution, links back, and credit. The sharing economy works because we’re each sharing our audiences, and providing the value of our endorsements. If you pick up someone’s work and put it on your blog, or mention a fact without crediting the source, you’re not building shared credibility. You’re just abusing someone else’s effort.

The important thing to realize is that we’re increasingly living in a world of information overload. So when people choose to listen to you it’s because you’re able to separate signal from noise. You provide a clear, contextually relevant voice within the topic or topics that you create and curate.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, JamesBrey

More About: content curation, contributor, features, online marketing, Web curation

For more Social Media coverage:


9 Free Tumblr Themes That Look Like Pinterest

9 Free Tumblr Themes That Look Like Pinterest

1. Quadro

From the font to the layout, the Quadro theme is a close tie with the Pinterest pinboard.

Click here to view this gallery.

There are so many content curation sites available these days, it can be difficult to maintain a strong presence across each platform.

You may have already invested a lot of time and energy over the years into your Tumblr account. But if you’ve also been diagnosed with “pinsanity,” you’re in luck — a number of Tumblr themes can transform your site a veritable Pinterest pinboard.

SEE ALSO: 10 Premium Tumblr Themes Worth Paying For

We’ve rounded up nine free Tumblr themes that will hopefully fill the Pinterest void in your heart. Let us know your favorite in the comments.

More About: design, features, pinterest, Social Media, tumblr

For more Social Media coverage:


NCAA’s Facebook Fan Committee Picks 97% Accurate March Madness Field

NCAA’s Facebook Fan Committee Picks 97% Accurate March Madness Field




Think you could have done a better job making the Big Dance bracket?

A mock NCAA Tournament selection committee comprised of social media-savvy college basketball fans correctly picked 66 of the March Madness field’s 68 teams.

The “Super 10” committee, made up of fans who submitted short videos to the official March Madness Facebook Page that demonstrated their hoops knowledge and passion, spent last weekend in Atlanta touring Turner Broadcasting’s studios, watching the ACC Tournament, and receiving and in-depth primer on how the brackets are built before making their own selections. They also documented the experience and corresponded with other fans at home using Facebook and Twitter.

“Social media played a huge part not just in how we entered the contest, but also how we showed everyone else out there what we were doing,” said Super 10 member Craig Caswell, a student at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Ultimately, the two teams the Super 10 picked that got left out of the actual field were Drexel and Miami. The official selection committee included Cal and Iona included instead. (Click here to check out the Super 10 bracket, and click here to see the official version.)

As the Super 10 deliberated and shared who they were considering, they got messages from some apparently confused fans who lobbied with stats and standings as if real seedings were on the line, said fan committee member Colin Casey.

“It wasn’t really nasty, as far as what you see on Facebook and Twitter sometimes, but it was definitely critical,” Casey said. “It was kind of funny, given what we were doing, but also kind of neat as far as getting more of sense for the criticism the actual committee gets.”

Casey and his Super 10 mates also got another firsthand brush with the actual committee. Former longtime selection committee member Stan Morrison was on hand as the Super 10 group tinkered with their bracket for hours on end over the weekend. Super 10 member Shelby Mast said being able to ask Morrison what the actual committee would have done in certain situations was invaluable and just one thing that made for an “unbelievably good” experience.

“I expected a lot of fun, but it was even better than I expected,” Mast said. “The official committee did a great job, even though there were a couple things we differed on. And the teams we missed, we had them right there in the discussion.”

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adamkaz

More About: Facebook, march madness, sports, Twitter

For more Social Media coverage: