The real-time curation wars (exclusive first look at Curated.by)

Uncategorized 2 Minutes

Back in March I wrote a post about the seven needs of real-time curators. Over the next week or so no less than three companies are shipping services that will fulfill that dream with tools that comply with all seven needs.

What are they?

1. Curated.by. (My Techcrunch Disrupt tweets on Curated.by is here).
2. Storify. (My Techcrunch Disrupt Storify bundle). Most of Storify’s tool is under NDA until announced later this week, so I can’t talk more about the tool.
3. Keepstream. (My Techcrunch Disrupt page on Keepstream).
4. Bag the Web. (My Techcrunch Disrupt page on Bag the Web).

First, I recorded an audio post about what is real time curation and what problem does it solve? You might listen to that, because it’ll explain what these tools are solving and how I’ll judge them over the next few days. Listen here:

http://www.cinchcast.com/cinchplayerext.swf

Second, I recorded a video last week with Curated.by’s founder, Bastian Lehmann. This is the first look that I know of at this curation tool and a discussion of how he’ll compete and make money providing these curation tools.

Based on my first playing with these tools it is clear that Curated.by and Storify are in the lead. They let you mix multiple media together, not just Tweets, and have good and easy-to-use drag-and-drop interfaces to let you reorder things. Who will be best? I need a few days putting them through their paces. If you are using these tools at Techcrunch, post your URLs in the comment area here and I’ll link your curation into mine, which is one way to get group curation.

Also, most, if not all, of these are embed-able in blog posts, so they are designed for the modern web and they seem to understand how to distribute themselves back into Twitter and Facebook. Below I’ll embed each of the curated feeds so you can watch them all in the morning and see how they behave when updated.

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Curated.by:

http://curated.by/embed/embed.js

_bundleWidget({
bundle_id:863,
title:’Techcrunch Disrupt’,
subtitle:’curated.by/Scobleizer’,
scrolling:true,
update:true,
shell:true,
auto_width:false,
per_page:20,
font_size:’11px’,
border_color:’666666′,
heading_text_color:’ffffff’,
heading_bg_color:’666666′,
link_color:’666666′,
text_color:’333333′,
content_bg_color:’ffffff’,
content_divider_color:’cccccc’,
width:300,
height:450
});

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Storify:

http://storify.com/scobleizer/techcrunch-disrupt.js

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KeepStream:

http://keepstream.com/Scobleizer/techcrunch-disrupt.js

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Bag the Web:

http://bagtheweb.com/embed_bag/s2IjaQ

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

Published

16 thoughts on “The real-time curation wars (exclusive first look at Curated.by)”

  3. Tank you Robert. Great reporting and right on the mark with this growing coverage of real-time news curation. I have almost finished preparing a map identifying all of the tools and services that can be of use for an online news curator and if you want to give a peek and your suggestions to it before it’s out, feel free to tweet me and I’ll let you in.

    Here is also another example of one of your above listed tools at work. Here is an “open”, daily updated curated stream of all the relevant new stories coming out on the topic of real-time news curation: http://keep.la/a7U7Y0

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  4. Thanks for the summary. This trend will surely produce some yet to be known “curators” of all types, for all industries and topics. But still, the original content has to come from somewhere and it has to be good.

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      1. Yes, I saw the embedded widgets and it’s great that they keep pulling information as time goes by.

        What I’m talking about is the ability to generate a static blog post after I feel the bundle has the information I need. I can then edit my blog post and eventually publish it.

        Don’t you think this could be an interesting feature?

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      2. This is definitely a compelling feature – ability to autopost to blogs makes it easy to distribute to your larger audience in combination with your own long-form commentary.One problem though, is that since these widgets are Javascript, the content won’t show up in a lot of RSS readers. At Keepstream we’re trying to develop an HTML-style widget that will show up – not available yet, we’re still tinkering with how it would work. But then it won’t reflect newly-added content, so it’s a tough balance. Sign in with Twitter at http://keepstream.com to get email updates or follow our blog (http://blog.keepstream.com) to stay in the loop on feature releases.btw.. tarpipe looks cool!

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      3. I agree that it’s a tough balance between having a static blog post that can be easily distributed through RSS and having an always updated widget. Anyway, I think that’s a feature journalists would like to have.

        Keepstream looks very interesting! I’m following your twitter account.

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  6. Yep, at KartMe we’re big believers in curation. Curation helps make things useful after the “real-time” news aspect has past. At KartMe, we help friends co-curate REAL WORLD things, like home design ideas ( e.g., http://www.kartme.com/debraellyn/50-temple-street ). You can also create a list of restaurants that you can add to with a click on Yelp or Eater ( http://www.kartme.com/shelby/bostoncambridge-favorites ) that works on your phone.

    And, of course, you can embed your lists (called “Karts”) on any blog–see the right side here at http://philmichaelson.com

    Thanks for covering curation!

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  7. Robert,

    I wanted you to be aware of our company called ScribbleLive which brings social media and journalism together in covering news.

    Two differences between our platform and those in your post.

    ScribbleLive supports the industry-strength functionality needed by media properties like Reuters, Hearst Television, Post Media,and Canwest to mention a few.

    Which brings me to the second difference. We’re already in deployment at numerous customers and plan to announce a major rev to our platform on Thursday.

    In your video interview with Curated.by, you mentioned the San Mateo gas fire earlier in the month and how these curation products bring real-time information into one place.

    Yes, that’s true and I’m not discounting this value, but I think most people value the combination of journalism and applying that journalistic expertise in inserting social media information into story.

    When I looked at coverage of the San Mateo gas fire, I couldn’t find one news organization that pulled real-time information into their reporting.

    I’m in San Francisco this week and would welcome a chance to talk to you about what we’re seeing at the high-end of the space. I personally come out of the digital side of business at CTV (largest broadcaster in Canada) so believe we have some common ground.

    I think you might be surprised by the amount of innovation in Toronto.

    Michael De Monte
    CEO
    ScribbleLive

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  8. At the risk of sounding like ‘Another person commenting to plug their product’, I think the product I’m working on; http://qrait.com, will be one to watch. Heavily in development at the moment but I’m really excited about it. Super easy to curate and bundle content from all around the web and make it completely realtime. And of course, we have the best name!

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  9. Which brings me to the second difference. We’re already in deployment at numerous customers and plan to announce a major rev to our platform on Thursday.

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