- We're running out of time
- I know.
- The guys who started Twitter and Blogspot are in the news. They have new businesses that are supposed to do something about the near infinite amount of written garbage their creations are filling the world with.
- What's their new idea?
- Curate content.
- What does that mean?
- Organize groups around subject, by invitation only. Then rank according to how much members say they "like" what they see.
- The curator decides who's in and who's out? Who curates the curators?
- The guys who started Twitter and Blogspot.
- And filled the world with garbage. Have you taken a look at their work in progress?
- Yes. More garbage.
- I don't think they'd agree with you.
- A safe bet.
- Who do you think should curate the curators? You? You use both Twitter and Blogspot.
- More misuse than use.
- Because you don't blog and don't tweet. What do you do?
- Publish. A one way communication.
- You are suggesting that curators should be publishers? What would you say is the difference between a tweet and blog, and publication?
- In the social media you're supposed to enter into a conversation, comment and return to see how the conversation develops in later "posts".
- And publication?
- One way. Good writing should leave you speechless.
- Why?
- Because it is finished. You've seen the highly praised serial dramas produced for TV, for example "Homeland", said to be our President's favorite show?
- Yes. I like it too.
- You like the sharpness of the writing. Characters are complex, change their minds, have good and bad impulses.
- What's wrong with that?
- It gives its audience a lot a talk about, doesn't it?
- Yes.
- The CIA fights the good fight against terrorism, and terrorists are given a chance to explain their motivations, challenging the audience to think.
- Again, what's wrong with that?
- No resolution.
- Why should there be?
- Individuals have resolution in their lives. Lives begin and end. Individuals cannot take both sides and accomplish anything.
- The show is like a Blogspot or Twitter account, its characters engaged in an endless correspondence with each other and within themselves. Nobody is curating.
- Yes.
- Don't the filmmakers curate?
- Yes, as the Twitter and Blogspot guys curated their sites.
- How can a curator end a conversation?
- Real conversations end when agreement is reached. When the matter is settled.
- Is anything ever settled in real life?
- You find out what works for you, as an individual, and go on doing it.
- And in the social media?
- The same: you curate what people do, not their talk. Curate on the basis of how well things work tested by experience.*
- Ok. Publishers don't get bogged down in endless conversation, they publish about doing things, not just talk about it. I still don't see where they are in the social media.
- Who curates the curators?
- Yes. Will you ask the Blogspot and Twitter guys to let you run their new networks?
- Arrange things so that the "one way" communications and communicators are sorted, ranked, presented according to how well they are likely to help individual members do things? When that would include finding their replacements, curators who could do the job? I don't think they'd like my ideas.
- They'd being willing to talk about it, wouldn't they? As you said, talk is what they do.
- Talk is cheap.
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*For how this might work, see Google Wants FAX
