Today’s problem is “user generated content”. Not because it is user-generated, but because it’s completely disorganized. In old media, you have editors who say, “This is good, people should see it.”. Now, we have “Most Viewed” pages. If you remove human intervention from focus group studies and market research, you get “Most Viewed” — a system where the lowest common denominator of human interests are celebrated automatically; where the aggregated whims of an uncoordinated mob dictate our cultural touchstones; where the mindlessness of strangers is rebranded as “collective intelligence.
Jakob Lodwick, via Marco. It’s not that I disagree… I wholeheartedly agree. And I hope this doesn’t sound like gloating. (It probably will, so, oops.) But my employer has been involved in such curatorship for the last year, and the previous incarnation of that title was at it for even longer. We intend to tackle another topic before the year’s end. And bunches of other people were doing similar things way before us, on various scales and to various levels of success. Exercising editorial upon internet content is not a new idea, the time of its introduction is way past. Even so, Channels sounds awesome and I’m rooting for it, absolutely!
Source: marco
