Looking at Bundlr’s community, we noticed there are two distinct types of bundles. We call them sprints or marathons, and they’re very distinct ways to curate a topic. Neither is better than the other, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Here’s some information to help you choose wisely.
These usually take a couple of hours to make, and can quickly have dozens or even hundreds of clips. They are used when you’re working on something time-sensitive. Common examples:
This kind of curation tends to get attention more quickly, since it’s about something interesting at the moment. You can watch the number of views increasing in real-time. But it won’t be of much use following it because there won’t be many updates. And so the attention eventually dies.
Marathons start small, without buzz, like when you’re creating a new blog. Unlike sprints, they keep getting updates. Common examples:
This kind of curation slowly attracts followers. The audience steadily increases. Look at the The Meaning of Life bundle, updated frequently by Renato, for over a year now. It’s one of our most followed bundles, without being promoted. This is the best strategy if you’re trying to build a following and become an influencer in a particular topic.
“Be part of the content ecosystem, not just a re-packager of it. Often, people think of themselves as either creators or curators as if these two things are mutually exclusive. What a curator really should do is embrace content as both a maker and an organizer.”
Besides being totally focused on improving Bundlr based on our community feedback, we sometimes take a look at other curation tools. We know Bundlr it’s not the perfect tool for every need, and there are very good applications made by great teams out there.
When we started working on Bundlr, back in 2010, there weren’t that many curation tools. But all of a sudden, they started popping up like mushrooms. Some didn’t last long, others are still online and kicking. Some just cloned features, others were game changers.
So, here is our list of the 8 best general-purpose curation tools:
The first one (launched in 2003). Used to be only about bookmarking and was used mostly by a tech-friendly audience. But it’s now under new management and aiming for the mainstream crowd.
It’s now the cool boy, and its community is growing very fast. Very simple to use, but remember, it works with just images and videos.
Curate content in the form of stories. Specialized for journalists.
The tool is more similar to blogging, that also offers content suggestions. Not our favorite interface design, though.
The most ambitious tool in terms of organization possibilities. Shame it’s in Flash.
A good-looking bookmarking tool, but it’s more focused on private curation.
As Zootool, a well designed bookmarking tool, with a minimalist approach.
Of course, our baby. We believe it’s the simplest to use and more flexible in terms of use cases.
Here’s a twitter list where you can follow them all. Did we miss any important curation tool? Let us know in the comments…
“We share links to helpful media in our tweets, status updates and even within our blog posts. But a thoughtful content curator is more than just a broadcaster of good info. It’s someone who understands their brand and their audience well enough to identify the relevancy of the content, as well as the best context for sharing.”
“Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what’s interesting, happening, and cool in their focus.”
There’s a role with growing importance at events: the digital curator. Not the curator selecting the speakers, but the curator picking the most relevant of what’s being said about an event.
It’s now common to offer tickets to press and bloggers to cover an event. However, for someone outside the event, it becomes hard to tell what’s happening of importance when everyone is covering everything. Curators filter the noise, find the hidden gems and aggregate all that in a single shareable page. Event organizers not only enjoy better coverage, as in the end they keep a good wrap-up page for attendants and future sponsors.
Some members of the Bundlr community have already figured this out. Look at these examples:
Because we believe in this potential, we’re making partnerships with event organizers to offer tickets to Bundlr curators. In the following month we will announce the list of events. Stay tuned!
