Why Content Curation Requires Humanity, Not Algorithms
Content curation will likely always be more art than science. For all the strides algorithms have made in AI and machine learning, they still don’t come close to a human when it comes to curating engaging, relevant, entertaining and useful content.
For example, Facebook famously fired its entire Trending News human curator team in the last week of August, in a bid to remove the risk of alleged political bias in its coverage. Within a week the company had inadvertently featured a fake news story about popular Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in its Trending News section.
Jeff Rum at Ignite details three reasons why we should show our human side rather than just let machines crunch the numbers when curating:
- Context is King: “Context… shows your audience why they should care about your story, and how they can provide support.”
- Personal Connection: “Are you more likely to relate to a logo or a face?”
- Empathy: “… your organization needs to appeal to a person’s capacity for empathy, which some studies suggest can motivate engagement and action.”
Content curation without humans is just aggregating the results of a popularity contest. Real curation at its best is discerning, discriminative, and selective. It adds value through perspective, insight, and guidance. For more, The Definitive Guide to Content Curation details best practices for how to curate like a champ.
For the rest of Rum’s argument for why curation requires more humanity than algorithms, click on the link below.
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