Curators need to add value, not just summarize to survive
Yahoo recently announced they have incorporated technology from their acquisition of Summly for $30M into a new mobile app. Here’s what CEO Marissa Mayer (formerly from Google) had to say:
We acquired Summly less than a month ago, and we’re thrilled to introduce this game-changing technology in our first mobile application.
The new app summarizes webpages into small amounts of text using technology licensed from SRI. So how does this tie into curation?
Many curators add value by finding relevant content, organizing it, and then editorializing it. While some editorialize by adding their own spin and perspective, others simply summarize the third party content. As technology moves forward, machines will increasingly be able to automatically summarize content making this function for human curators less valuable. As a result, curators who add new information and their own perspective will rise to top compared to curators who simply summarize (as machines do).
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