It hadn't occurred to me until I saw it being done that social bookmarking and social microblogging are both popular in part because the create flows of information edited and curated by experts.
One good reason to follow the bookmarks of a user belonging to a social bookmarking site is simply it is a source of good information. The bookmarks ought to be high quality and relevant in the expert's topic area.
It makes sense to follow the tweets on the homepage of a user belonging to Twitter (or any microblog system), because they represent a selection, an inclusion, of edited and curated information for free, usually from an expert.
A Twitter homepage combines the posts from a user's followers, which amounts to multiple levels of curation. Suppose a number of people practicing organic farming create Twitter accounts and post information they feel is important. Suppose then an expert in organic farming, perhaps an editor of an organic farming and gardening magazine becomes a Twitter user and then follows the tweets of those practicing organic farming. Suddenly, this user's homepage becomes a fountain of curated knowledge on organic farming.
The same phenomena occurs (without the vertically integrated curation) on social bookmarking sites. A social bookmark system is an example of horizontally integrated curation, since many hands organize, but one result does not necessarily flow into another, progressively filtering content. What if you could follow another person's bookmarks and aggregate the bookmarks of all your followers onto your profile page?
The question presents itself: Where did I go wrong?
I had thought of bookmarking as bookmarking and blogging as blogging, each highly personal, one organizing content for an individual's own use and the other for publishing (in a mostly traditional way, I tended to scoff at the idea of blogs as conversations, but they are, just not as flexible and immediate as microblogs). What I missed about the social aspect was the flows of information they create, which are curated. I envisioned years ago the idea of users collaboratively organizing the content of a website, but that wasn't all that great an achievement, since that is essentially what wiki users have been doing from day one.
I thought about applying it to all the content, thinking perhaps I could Tom Sawyer-like, get others to organize my stuff, but my second thought was, who would want to do that? I think most efforts to get users to organize content will fail and I think most efforts have, except where the social ingredient is in the mix. Collaboratively edited social content sites for news, bookmarks, short messages, do work, but through self interest in the flows of information they create. They become platforms for self-promotion.
There is no incentive for you to come organize my site. Flickr allows users to tag other user's pictures, to essentially organize content for another user, just as I thought would be possible, but I see no evidence it is being used generally. Except for the Flickr Commons, where there exists an incentive to surround historically important images with context, to tell their stories so they will be preserved and meaningful for society, where local historians can demonstrate their knowledge and where self-promotion is possible through the organization of other people's stuff.
Despite seeing the social ingredient at work in wikis and despite seeing the essentially (and pioneering) social organization of the CPAN library, I missed its importance. It's importance comes from the curated flows of information created by the social organizing, editing, contextualizing with narrative, selecting and filtering, that occurs in social media systems.
One good reason to follow the bookmarks of a user belonging to a social bookmarking site is simply it is a source of good information. The bookmarks ought to be high quality and relevant in the expert's topic area.
It makes sense to follow the tweets on the homepage of a user belonging to Twitter (or any microblog system), because they represent a selection, an inclusion, of edited and curated information for free, usually from an expert.
A Twitter homepage combines the posts from a user's followers, which amounts to multiple levels of curation. Suppose a number of people practicing organic farming create Twitter accounts and post information they feel is important. Suppose then an expert in organic farming, perhaps an editor of an organic farming and gardening magazine becomes a Twitter user and then follows the tweets of those practicing organic farming. Suddenly, this user's homepage becomes a fountain of curated knowledge on organic farming.
The same phenomena occurs (without the vertically integrated curation) on social bookmarking sites. A social bookmark system is an example of horizontally integrated curation, since many hands organize, but one result does not necessarily flow into another, progressively filtering content. What if you could follow another person's bookmarks and aggregate the bookmarks of all your followers onto your profile page?
The question presents itself: Where did I go wrong?
I had thought of bookmarking as bookmarking and blogging as blogging, each highly personal, one organizing content for an individual's own use and the other for publishing (in a mostly traditional way, I tended to scoff at the idea of blogs as conversations, but they are, just not as flexible and immediate as microblogs). What I missed about the social aspect was the flows of information they create, which are curated. I envisioned years ago the idea of users collaboratively organizing the content of a website, but that wasn't all that great an achievement, since that is essentially what wiki users have been doing from day one.
I thought about applying it to all the content, thinking perhaps I could Tom Sawyer-like, get others to organize my stuff, but my second thought was, who would want to do that? I think most efforts to get users to organize content will fail and I think most efforts have, except where the social ingredient is in the mix. Collaboratively edited social content sites for news, bookmarks, short messages, do work, but through self interest in the flows of information they create. They become platforms for self-promotion.
There is no incentive for you to come organize my site. Flickr allows users to tag other user's pictures, to essentially organize content for another user, just as I thought would be possible, but I see no evidence it is being used generally. Except for the Flickr Commons, where there exists an incentive to surround historically important images with context, to tell their stories so they will be preserved and meaningful for society, where local historians can demonstrate their knowledge and where self-promotion is possible through the organization of other people's stuff.
Despite seeing the social ingredient at work in wikis and despite seeing the essentially (and pioneering) social organization of the CPAN library, I missed its importance. It's importance comes from the curated flows of information created by the social organizing, editing, contextualizing with narrative, selecting and filtering, that occurs in social media systems.
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