Social curation is an alluring evil

"Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant" - Mitchell Kapor

When we used to rely on newspapers for our information it was common to read just the one paper that most closely aligned itself to our own prejudices. This gave us a warm but warped perspective on the world, with our own narrow outlook on life being confirmed by the events and opinions we read about. Our consumption of the internet hasn’t changed much of that at all. Despite opening us up to tap into and untold variety of opinions, interpretations and analysis, Google can always provide us with the evidence that confirms our specific point of view is right. Facebook and Twitter can provide us with the like-minded friends. That’s why we like it. And social curation means it is going to get worse.

Search engines have been tailoring, not just their adverts, but their search results to match what they think we are interested in for some time. Facebook does much the same. Twitter provides us with a wholly self-selected stream of opinion. What is changing however, is that these platforms are not just looking at what we are interested in, but they are analysing what our internet friends are interested it. Social curation selects what we see by analysing what our friends are sharing, liking, plus+’ing, retweeting, With apps like Zeebox, even our selection of what we watch on TV is being influenced by who our friends are and what they are watching. Just as you could be defined by the junk mail you received, the internet now defines us increasingly by the friends we keep. If we choose a wide circle of friends with varied interests, and opinions then all will be well, but it is inevitable that there will be bias in what the internet delivers to us. This is just those with the loudest voices getting the most attention: those with high social media skills and presence (and not just those with impressive Klout scores) will have their opinions figuring more prominently on the different internet platforms we inhabit. Nothing wrong with that, but in allowing our internet consumption to be determined by our e-social circle we are narrowing our personal weltanschauung into a decreasingly downward spiral if we are not careful. It is not us – broad-minded people that we are - that will exclude minority or contrary opinion and information from our Facebook timelines, our Twitter feeds, and Google+ streams; it is the platforms themselves that force us to look through the wrong end of the telescope.

The range of content management systems that rely on social is growing, or at least growing more social. Digg, Stumbleupon, Paper.li, Scoop.it, Storify, Postrank (now owned by Google) and Pearltrees are the ones to watch in 2012.

Content curation is no bad thing. We are all suffering from information overload, and this is, after all, what UKNetMonitor does for its clients – we sift for the significant and relevant posts about our clients so that we and they can assess and analyse no more and no less than the information needed. However, we do it dispassionately and hopefully reasonably objectively.

We should applaud content curation that provides us with the serendipitous, that does inject provoking material, and does challenge our own world view, but social curation relies on the opinions, biases and prejudices of our social friends/likes/follows/circles as the arbiter of our content. This means an ever narrowing perspective of self-reflecting mirrors. We should choose our friends carefully and widely in future. Otherwise we (individuals and businesses) just end up drinking our own bathwater.