Comments on: Curation. Can you Filter Free Content

By: Mike Hunt

Mike Hunt — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:36:05 +0000

Lisa, I’m sorry. You need a little delete function on here so people can come back and delete their own comments, after their done amusing themselves. I don’t mean any disrespect at all. I’m just so juvenile sometimes.
You the best baby!

By: Mike Hunt

Mike Hunt — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:41:16 +0000

I hear ya Lisa, no problem. Think nothing of it. By the way, if you would, please call me by my full name. After all I’m not just any Mike, I’m Mike Hunt and Mike Hunt is unique. Say it out loud a few times, if it helps you with the visualization.

By: Mike Hunt

Mike Hunt — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:41:14 +0000

Why? Why use anyone else’s content? Because it’s cheap, easy, available? Those are all reasons, but not good ones, I don’t think. Weather, whatever, some entities a good at obtaining specif data, but there is an API for just about everything now, twist it up yourself and make it better, that’s where the value comes from, not only for your visitors, but for you. It’s completely customizable and it’s yours, you own it. it’s unique and your own creation. That’s art, that’s evolution. Otherwise you’re not doing any thing a five minute script couldn’t do a thousand times faster and better.

I wouldn’t consider using anything scraped. News is news, extract the facts and run it through your own brain for the results. Why would you want Joe Smuckles opinion about anything on your site?

By: Jason at Internet Exposure

Jason at Internet Exposure — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:04:02 +0000

I understood the point of the post / presentation as being that including some curated (and/or regurgitated) content in your site’s mix is a good way to it make it a better website. There is certainly a continuum – it can’t be all republished content and I believe they did a good job emphasizing that it needs to be a mix.

“Now traffic is shifting from URLs and search to destinations”

Having a mix of unique content, commentary, and news from around the web makes your site more of a one-stop destination. To use a highly-oversimplified example: it’s not a bad thing that I can get the weather on my homepage and don’t have to go to a dedicated weather site.

If you successfully spark a meaningful discussion around a scraped news story in your forum, isn’t that creating something “truly unique and better”?

By: Mike Hunt

Mike Hunt — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:26:40 +0000

Regurgitated content is regurgitated content any way you lay it out. That’s just lazy, has limited value and only serves to corrupt the Web with duplicate information. Yeah, they maybe able to get some traffic from it initially, but eventually they’ll suffer the penalty of exclusion. Just about everything is based in some way on things that were created before, but unless you are creating something truly unique and better from the modified components, what is the point?

By: Jason at Internet Exposure

Jason at Internet Exposure — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:55:09 +0000

Steve do you think the issue is that people have seen the content before (i.e. they’re following that feed in their RSS reader already) or that it’s too obvious that it’s automated?

If it’s the latter, perhaps the secret is trying to make it that content seem more integrated / natural?

As the post says:
“Robots are your friends. But don’t let visitors smell the metal.”
and
“(you can’t tell the difference between which posts on HuffPo are links, which were paid for and which they were written by staffers, and that’s intentional)”

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:07:17 +0000

Sorry, Mike. Tough to work much into a 20 minute session and still get the meat. I’ll try harder next time. :)

By: Mike Hunt

Mike Hunt — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:09:26 +0000

Blah, blah, blah. Lisa, most of your stuff is entertaining, if for no other reason than you personality shining through. This article is like, what’s going yawn? You’ve got to inject some of that Lisa Barone juice to make this stuff interesting baby.

By: Steve @ 2010 Taxes

Steve @ 2010 Taxes — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:02:03 +0000

I have some forums that run MyBB and have automated RSS feed insertion. They work alright but original content is liked better by the users and by the search engines.