Content Curators Needed: Facebook's Interest Lists Unveiled
Facebook's success has grown, in part, due to its ability to "borrow" the best features of other social networking sites, integrating them in ways millions of users can easily use to build and share content.
Have all changes been embraced? When they released a right-hand ticker-style news feed, grabbed straight out of Twitter's handbook, many users were up in arms. Maybe it was too soon after releasing the ability to "subscribe" to another member's feed - another complicating Twitter-like option.
Despite a myriad of changes leading up to last December's worldwide Timeline release, Facebook's membership continues its upward trend. They must be doing something right...
With Interest Lists, a new content curation feature unveiled Thursday, Facebook underscores its uncanny ability to spot trends and stay in front of them.
In predicting social media trends for 2012, Gravity Summit co-founder and CEO Beverly Macy wrote about the continuing growth of content curation's importance:
"Competitive advantage goes to companies who quickly figure out how to enable effective aggregation curation. Look for rapid innovation in this field."Seems Facebook listened.
Interest Lists are curated news feeds you can create and share with others, based on aggregating Facebook pages surrounding a particular area of interest, such as a company, artistic endeavor, hobby, industry or whatever you'd like. The list can be subscribed to, just like an individual member's feed can be followed. With Interest Lists, however, you're following any number of feeds brought together by the whim of the List creator, who can continue to add (or remove) as desired.
Each hand-selected member has their own unique set of content they share on a daily basis. With Interest Lists, you have a powerful set of aggregated links, images and status updates from individuals who all share something in common. Well-selected Lists will be condensed feeds of topical goodness, rich with re-shareable content.
Interest Lists are being slowly released to some of Facebook's member base early, as many previous features, including Timeline, were. Early addition of this feature can be a powerful advantage to those willing to embrace the "honor". Those that assemble the first Interest Lists on popular topics such as technology, social media, fashion, recipes and more may become the de-facto curator solely based on having developed an early following, possibly remaining on top even when others develop similar Lists.
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