Kevin Spacey and Bill Gates in an Elevator
While Frank Underwood (House of Cards) used people to get to the top and throw them back down, Kevin Spacey said:
“If you’re lucky enough to do well, it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down”.
To be honest, I’m not a big fan of quotes, but Kevin Spacey’s quote contains the solution to one of the biggest challenges of the Internet today, finding good content fast.
We don’t have enough time (or knowledge in case the domain is new to us) to find good content. That is the reason 92% of the people who Google, don’t search beyond the first page, most of us will stick to the top three results. You can’t seriously think that out of all of the content out there (which keeps piling up), only the results on the first page are worth reading.
Another byproduct of the lack of time we have searching for content is the success of “top 5 something” articles which we are overwhelmed by. We want the best content with the least efforts.
People believe in the concept of standing on the shoulders of giants, and in this case, reading content experts have already read and approved. This is one of the reasons we follow opinion leaders on Twitter, to enjoy distilled content that we wouldn’t have discovered otherwise, or at least not so fast. However, using Twitter feels sometimes like being on escalators in the mall. The information on your feed passes you like people going one direction while you are going in the other, throwing pieces of information at you, all at the same time. Therefore the click rate on links is low (you can check yours on http://analytics.twitter.com/).
Other content curation models are far more successful, and are becoming more and more common. Take Product Hunt for example, which helps even tech savvies to discover new, awesome products, which they might have not discovered for a while without PH.
Content curation by experts is sending that elevator Kevin Spacey was talking about. Don’t just think about how efficient it is for all of us, think about the educational aspect of it. Here is the search graph from last July for the term “Business Adventures John Brooks”.
It spiked following Bill Gates’ statement this is his favorite business book. If BG appreciates it, chances are it’s worth a read. Now think about kids learning to code from sources vetted by the best developers in the world, young entrepreneurs learning to launch a venture by reading content appreciated by successful founders…you get the picture. A better world. Sure, you can get advice from experts today as well, but once this method for content search will become common both on the curators as well as the consumers side, it has the potential to make a lot of people’s lives better. Less algorithms and SEO, more experts’ judgment.
Obviously curating content benefits the curators as well (besides the awesome feeling of doing good). They can gather a community on the go, simply by curating content they consumed as part of their line of work anyhow. No need to spend hours writing a blog or being active on social media. With the communities they gather, they gain a reputation as opinion leaders and monetization options start coming their way.
While content curation is becoming more and more relevant (as information on the web is piling up), the right tool to do it has always been there under our nose — newsletters. Klint Finley addressed this in this TechCrunch article, so did Colin Raney in this post. Newsletters bring at least X20 click rate comparing to social media, while not requiring content seekers to remember visiting one more website, scrolling down endless distracting feeds. Obviously there will have to be a rating mechanism to prevent newsletters’ pathology, spam, but it is achievable.
People sometimes hear “knowledge is power”, but they don’t really appreciate it the same way they appreciate power in the form of money. Ever since we launched RefreshBox (9 weeks ago), a platform that enables people to create and get subscribers to their 5-link-collection newsletters consisting their weekly professional best read, I read the best content I have ever read online, the kind of content that makes you grasp that knowledge is power. And I love it.
Image by Paul Hudson
