What content curation actually is
Content curation is choosing a small number of things from a large number, arranging them so the order and the grouping carry meaning, and putting the result where someone can see it. All three parts are required. Saving links is collecting, and collecting on its own produces an archive rather than a collection. The difference is that a curator leaves things out.
The three parts
Selection is the part people skip. A curator's real work is rejection: deciding that most of what crosses their desk does not belong. A folder with four thousand links in it has had no selection applied to it at all, which is why nobody, including its owner, ever opens it.
Arrangement is the part people underrate. The same twelve links in a different order are a different argument. Put the strange one first and the collection reads as provocation. Put it last and it reads as a reward. Museums have known this for two centuries and bookmark managers have never once acted on it.
Display is the part that makes the other two matter. A collection nobody sees is a private preference, and a private preference is not curation. This is not about audience size. Showing one person is display.
Why the tools got it wrong
Almost every tool built for saving links optimises for retrieval. Search, folders, tags, full-text archives. All of it answers the question of how to find the thing again.
That is a real question, and it is not the interesting one. Nobody is short of ways to find a link. What people lack is a reason for the link to have been kept, and something to do with it once it has.
The result is a category of software where the most common outcome is a large pile that its owner feels vaguely guilty about.
The bowerbird test
A male bowerbird builds a structure out of collected objects and arranges them by colour and size. It steps back, looks at its own work, and moves things. The bower has no function beyond being looked at.
That is the test for whether a collection is curated. Did anyone step back and look at it? Did anything move as a result? Was it built to be seen?
Most saved-link piles fail all three.
What good curation looks like in practice
- Small. A list of nine things you stand behind beats a list of ninety you half-remember.
- Ordered. Not by date added, which is an accident, but by something you chose.
- Annotated. One line on why this one is here does more work than any tag.
- Named. A list called Reading is not a collection. A list called Things that changed how I write is.
- Finished enough to send. Not perfect. Sendable.
Questions people ask
- What is the difference between content curation and content aggregation?
- Aggregation gathers everything that matches a rule, automatically and at scale. Curation selects a few things by judgement and arranges them. An algorithmic feed is aggregation. A reading list with nine entries and a reason for each is curation.
- Is saving bookmarks the same as curating?
- No. Saving is collecting, which is the first third. Without selection, arrangement and display you have an archive, and an archive is a tool for finding things again rather than a thing anyone looks at.
- How many items should a curated collection have?
- Fewer than you want to include. There is no correct number, but the useful discipline is that adding a twelfth item should mean removing one, because a collection that only grows has stopped being curated.
- Does curation require an audience?
- It requires display, which is not the same as an audience. A collection you would send to one person passes. A collection you would not show anyone is a private preference.