Curator Vs Crowd

by Saul Devine on 18 December 2009  |  0 comments
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Emma Davies talks about Daisy Whitney's hot tip for the next big thing in new media, "curator content sites", and whether this is a trend away from crowd sourced content.

A post by Emma Davies, Publishing Director at lovemoney.com

At the end of the year its easy to turn ones mind to end of year round ups and predictions for next year. Of all the ones out there - this Daisy Whitney video really appealed to me. Daisy takes a look at early adopters and what they are going to be doing in 2010. So the people who were using Facebook and YouTube years ago - what are they now looking for? After all where they lead others will follow.

So what does Daisy Whitney think? Early adopters are moving away from crowd source content to curator source content. Essentially content that has an editorial bent or point of view. In the US; Daisy cites three video sites as very popular with this group ovguide , goodmorning yahoo and reason.tv. Each one offers a mix of professional 'news report' style content and aggregation of good quality video.

It makes sense, as we all know there is an awful lot of uncensored and unedited content out in the world, and if you're looking to make actual life decisions, does all this information just clutter up the mind and confuse further? Is this why early adopters have started to move towards curator sites and people who actually are able to guide?

It seems to me a hybrid solution would work best and that's the approach we take on lovemoney.com.

Take the recent BA strike for example. There are plenty of news stories out there about the strike happening and plenty of sites hosting comments from disgruntled customers. But how many sites were able to combine the news, with practical advice and customer help on the situation? Well... we were able to and all thru the simple medium of an article generated by a clever editorial team and a very helpful community.

On the more specific topic of finance; a recent study by the Nottingham Business School Financial Services Research Forum has found that IFAs are the most trusted of all the traditional financial types out there. With everything that has happened over the past two years, its no surprise trust is being questioned, but with little choice and a lack of knowledge, consumers are stuck in a quandary. Do they continue to ask their bank manager for free biased advice, pay an IFA to help them or try and work out the sometimes complicated financial choices they need to make on their own?

This is where the early adopters are onto something. Going to someone who is a professional 'curator' in the field and asking their help, can save you both time and money. But to my mind combining this with 'crowd' intelligence, from an engaged community is even more valuable. It provides the knowledge and the trust that you just won't get from the traditional sources anymore and can't get from crowd sites alone.

Bring on the hybrids.