The Case for Curation as a Service

Curators are like life preservers for the web. When you’re drowning in content, they’re there to save you.

The amount of content that’s created on the web is mind-boggling.

YouTube alone boasts 100 hours of video uploaded every minute. take a second to comprehend that…100 hours of video footage every minute! While that’s an enormous amount of footage, the fact is, not every video is worth watching.

The same is true for blog posts, podcasts, and photos. Some content is just down right horrible and actually wastes time instead of bringing value.

That’s why for the past couple of years, I’ve been intrigued with content curation. It’s one of the biggest reasons I created StartupMoxie for entrepreneurs. But I’m not talking about curation using sophisticated algorithms. I’m talking about human curation.

Curation as a Service (or CaaS)

I believe, as the amount of content on the web increases, there will inevitably be a need for more human curators. People who are domain experts (or have an obsession with a topic) that can sift through the garbage and collect the gems.

If you’re in the tech space you’ve likely heard of SaaS (software as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service). It’s now time to add a new acronym to the mix…CaaS (curation as a service).

Why is curation important? Think about it, how many times have you read and article or watched a video that was horrible in all sense of the word? I think the real question is, do you really want to spend time on content that brings little value to you?

I know I don’t…ain’t nobody got time for that!

Collecting and Sharing Content Doesn’t Mean You’re a Good Curator

It’s important to note that content curation isn’t some shortcut to creating a wildly visited website. Or a lazy way to populate a website with stuff.

It’s actually a lot of work…if you care about the topic and providing value to your audience.

Good curators spend countless hours digging through the web trying to find the best resources for a given topic. And spend even more time formatting what they find in a readable manner.

At the end of the day, whether it’s a community curated site like Inbound.org or a curated newsletter, good curation is all about quality…not quantity. I know you’re tired of hearing this analogy, but it’s absolutely true.

Now, go forth and curate.