As Yahoo!, AOL and Google Evolve, Facebook's Socially Curated Network Defines the Future - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz famous for offthecuff comments and some tart language said the other day that Facebook would be a competitor quotsomedayquot Which got me to thinking of the big web media companies what is their core underlying DNA and what are the essential characteristics that will create a successful business model in the futureYahoo is easy They were born as a directory service back when the web was small enough and slow moving enough that human taxonomy was possible Over the years it39s evolved into a media company but still very much with the core concepts of gathering and offering an editorial experience to usersAll media and advertising professionals companies organizations and educators are invited to become MediaBizBloggers For more information contact Jack Myers at jackmediadvisorygroupcom wwwMediaBizBloggerscom is revenuefree and accepts only probono advertising for industry organizations and charities and there is no cost to include your blogGoogle began its life as an engineering company amp8211 building and refining what is clearly the world39s best search engine It has evolved into an advertising network widespread and technology enabled But at the core of Google is codeAOL under Tim Armstrong is evolving from an access provider to a hybrid of content and advertising Unlike others in the space Armstrong has doubled down on human editorial talent rather than algorithms and technology With more than 750 journalists now employed at AOL as well as distributed content creation solutions like SEED and the recent purchase of TechCrunch Armstrong is placing his bet on professional humansSo where does Facebook fall in all this Facebook is a Socially Curated NetworkJust look at its roots It was born on a college campus It was born not to sell ads or to be a web directory or to hire journalists It was created to connect people To make students39 virtual friends visibleFacebook solves problems for its users And the problems it solves only gets more extreme as the web content explosion continuesEric Schmidt CEO of Google told a gathering back in the summer that from the beginning of time until 2006 just 5 exabtyes of information had been created Now that much information is created every two days And it39s clear that the volume of content or data masquerading as content will continue to grow at a stunning rateWe39re drinking data from a firehose quotFilter or Be Floodedquot says content strategist Jeffrey MacIntyreHuman curation is the future of advertising search and publishingIn the face of this overwhelming data flood amp8211 trusted sources become necessary essential critical voices in the unfiltered datasphereSo who do you trust Your college roommate Your mom Your foodie friendFacebook has a massive lead in the Curated Human Network space Because their entry point is college or younger you don39t age out of Facebook you age in The connections relationships contacts and social currency increases in value over timeThe nature of large social networks is that you need to have filters inside the filter and that39s why Facebook39s updated Groups function represents how clearly they understand the value proposition of their business Offering new tools is critical to keep the Curated experience properly filteredThere39s no doubt that all this sharing creates value and complexity My friend Jules Polonetsky the former head of AOL39s privacy practice says that there is a complex line between purely private sharing and semiprivate sharing For example where there was a power outage in his Washington DC suburb he posted quotDoes anyone know when the power will come back onquot No doubt he was reaching beyond friends and family to neighbors and others whom he39d never met Yet did he want to see his posts about the black out in the Washington Post He says no way He wanted to be semipublicThe dynamic between sharing and privacy is very much a work in progress But at least right now the human curated network seems more useful and personal than the algorithms that are chasing us around the web trying to figure out what we want to know so they can predict our behaviorsNew York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the other day he doesn39t get Facebook because he doesn39t want to know what things people are doing Yet if you39ve been to his office at City Hall amp8211 you quickly notice that he39s put his desk in the middle of a wide open sea of humanity Bloomberg is in fact intensely social Much like a trading floor in a brokerage there39s a fast moving and open flow of information And that39s the way he likes it New York39s City Hall is Bloomberg39s quotFacebookquot created in a realworld setting It seems he too values a curated network of friends and colleaguesFacebook is about people And people matter As the world gets more complex amp8211 people will only matter moreGoing forward the companies that are going to be the next generation Yahoo39s will blend machine and human intelligence They will use technology to find and filter the flood of content that is overwhelming current systems But they will also embrace and implement curation methodologies that have their basis in human pattern recognition and style Facebook has already got a massive head start with an army of volunteer curators that don39t think of what they do as work After all how much effort does it take to click the 39like39 button Now the question is how much aggregate value does that createThat39s the power of a Socially Curated NetworkSteve Rosenbaum is founder and CEO of Magnifynet and the Author of the forthcoming McGrawHill Business book quotCuration Nationquot March 2011 Steve can be contacted at stevemagnifynet Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter wwwtwittercommagnifyRead all Steve39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Steve Rosenbaum MediaBizBloggersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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As Yahoo!, AOL and Google Evolve, Facebook's Socially Curated Network Defines the Future - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers

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