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Technology & Innovation —

Controlling The Content Firehose

Digital information services and social networks provide an unending firehose of real-time content. What is curation, who should do it, and why do we need it now more than ever?
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What’s the Latest Development?

The explosion of real-time information through social networks and services like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube delivers an unstoppable torrent of content—and opportunity for applications like Storify, a newly-launched curation service. Tools like Storify, Storyful, and Keepstream allow anyone to aggregate and filter news, a job traditionally done by journalists. Some call what these tools do ‘aggregation,’ others prefer ‘curation,’ because it implies a person pulling together the best of something into a more coherent whole.

What’s the Big Idea?

Storify is part of a much wider trend towards what will likely play a big role in the future of media. The rise of real-time information sources means we need curation and filtering more than ever before. The Huffington Post and other digital media outlets already pose major competition to traditional media as the “gatekeepers of information and trusted oracles of what is important.”

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