Content curation isn’t just a publishing practice. It can also be adopted as a central element of an entire business model. We’ve put together a list of some great companies that have embraced content curation in this way.To give you an idea of the how each company uses content curation, we’ve tried to find answers to the following 3 questions:
A) What does the company, platform or service do?
B) When was it founded?
C) What sets it apart from other companies, platforms or services that use content curation?
1.
platform.idiomag.com
Andrew Davies of idio UK was kind enough to answer our questions directly.
A) “idio is a platform for intelligent aggregation, curation, and tracking of content. It is used by large brands and publishers who want to create more value from their content.
“Our core technology is a cloud-based semantic extraction platform, which enables us to analyse, categorise, personalise and behaviourally track content across over 12 million topics.
“A recent example is themediabriefing.com, which is the real-time news and information resource for the media industry. It automatically tracks and categorises thousands of articles every day, to deliver the very best insight and up-to-date business news about TV, Radio, Digital Media, B2B Media etc. The intelligent curation technology is matched by deep editorial competency.”
B) “idio was founded in 2006.”
C) “We are one of very few companies that have the technical competency to use an enterprise-level content analytics approach and deliver very tangible and valuable use-cases for a variety of organisations. If a company has a large archive of content, or sees a large volume of relevant conversation on the social web related to their products, we can probably help.”
What we think: The idio platform is not a content curation tool in itself, but it enables users to become curators. For an impressive example of the platform in action, check out idiomag.com, where you can create your own personalised music magazine in seconds.
2.
pearlfinders.com/uk
A) Pearlfinders filters the media for stories about corporate change. Their research team then evaluates the possible consequences for a company’s marketing strategy, and provides a report complete with contact details of key influencers.
B) The company was launched in 2001.
C) Pearlfinders say “Our impartial stance, plus our experience and technique, means we obtain unrivalled access to UK and international brand decision-makers (over 5,000 a year). The output is actionable and valuable intelligence that helps our clients grow their new business pipelines and better understand their markets.”
What we think: At Organic Development, we use Pearlfinders every day to keep on top of new media stories in the digital sector. It’s a great example of how curation can be used to turn huge amounts of information from a variety of sources into a useful, accessible report format.
3.
meltwater.com/products/meltwater-news
A) Meltwater News is a media monitoring platform that (amongst other things) tracks keywords, phrases and topics in news sources and presents the results as searchable, categorised lists or customisable reports.
B) The Meltwater group was founded in 2001.
C) Meltwater say their platform boasts the “industry's broadest search capabilities” because it “tracks more than 115,000 global news sources in 190 countries and 100 languages”.
What we think: Meltwater News is an extremely powerful tool (albeit with a heavier emphasis on aggregation than curation). The Multi-language support is a particularly useful feature, especially for those businesses that have customers all over the world.
4.
magnify.net/
A) Magnify.net is a video publishing platform that allows people to integrate created, curated and contributed video on their websites.
B) Magnify.net was founded in 2006.
C) The advert targeting system on Magnify.net is a great step towards solving the problem of monetising curation. If video curators add value to content by increasing viewers, they can share the rewards.
What we think: Magnify.net provides users with the opportunity to become professional content curators, which is an exciting prospect for budding digital business people. Even better, Steve Rosenbaum (the founder of the site) is an excellent writer and speaker when it comes to content curation. Check out one of his fine Mashable articles on the subject here.
5.
techmeme.com
A) Techmeme arranges links to technology stories into a single, easy-to-scan page. Story selection is accomplished via computer algorithm extended with direct human editorial input.
B) Techmeme was launched in 2005.
C) There are a lot of sites out there that simply aggregate technology news, but the input of human editors at Techmeme ensures the stories are intelligently filtered.
What we think: We love the simplicity of the Techmeme’s interface. It may not be the best looking website in the world, but it’s a quick and intuitive way to access tech articles from a number of different sources.
Want to find out more about content curation? Click here for our earlier post on the subject.
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