Curation: The Next Web Revolution II
There was a tipping point. Somewhere in the not to distant past almost everything (except oil) moved from shortage to abundance and then quickly to over abundance. Moore's law fuels our crazy, crowded modern world. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore wrote a 1965 paper aptly named Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits. Computers would get more powerful as costs dropped.
oore's Law means Curation Is The Next Web Revolution. My January 2011 post on ScentTrail Marketing didn't fully discuss implications of a "curation economy" such as:
- Curation must be part of every business model.
- Curation tools such as Twitter, Facebook and About.me will dominate ecommerce (B2B or B2C) in the near term.
- The next generations of consumers are and will be curators.
- Marketing, selling or interacting with curators is different.
Business Curators
In 1981 when I sold P&G's bar soap to Wegmen's in upstate New York I focused on P&G's products and immediate competitors. The world was smaller. Today, to make the same sale, I would need authority on anything and everything about the bar soap market such as environmental issues, global competition, web developments, competitor's strengths and weaknesses and about a million other things. I would "curate" the infinity of information about soap into an understandable digest, a magazine of informed highlights. Curation is the only path to authority and authority. Curation in forms such as trust, respect and a desire to join is the only way to "sell" anything in a social media fueled curation economy. Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) require intelligent curators.
Curation Tools Dominate
Would you stick with candles after Edison created the light bulb? The world changed and candle makers suffered. "Social media' is a term many businesses feel doesn't apply to them. If you ask a businesswoman if she is an expert in her category, "Of course," is the immediate answer. As curation tools determine what businesses have authority and expertise and who doesn't it will be easy to separate light bulb makers from candle diehards. Pity the business lacking social media marketing knowledge or skill. Businesses who have expertise but lack curators will fall behind. Curate or die.
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