It was interesting to read about earlier visions of aggregation in addition to the more recent examples. I feel as though we all are aggregators of the media that we chose to read. Like Ann Friedman, author of “We’re All Aggregators Now”, I too bookmark articles that are too long so that I can read them later and prefer to find platforms in which I can read with as few advertisements as possible. As a journalist I do feel guilty that this often disadvantages the publisher, but as a reader I am selfish and want the most convenient experience possible.
Last year I worked as an editorial intern for Girl’s Life magazine and included links and excerpts of other articles and information frequently. I often struggled with how to appropriately aggregate the einformation. I found Friedman’s rules of being an ethical aggregator to be especially interesting. In my eyes there’s a fine line between aggregation and plagiarizing and it is important to know the difference.
“Curators are the New Creators”, written by Gaby Goldberg, started off with some pretty powerful statistics. As most people know, the amount of information on the internet is constantly soaring and as Goldberg put it, “we are experiencing a content overload.” The statistics about the amount of usage on social media and search engines such as Google really puts it into perspective how active creators and users are on the internet.
As Goldberg explained, curation fulfills a need in a particular market and builds a personal brand or audience. The example of The News Run was really fitting. Anam Khan was able to identify the need for Pakistani Americans to read news in a comfortable way. Curated the most important news of the day in Pakistan and presenting the material in a way most people can understand fit the needs of people like Hanaa’ Tameez.
theSkimm is another great example of fitting a need in a particular market. The founders were able to target young women which was at the time, and still often is, an overlooked market. Both of these examples really made me think about my own endeavors and how I can use the information in these readings to explore my topic of equine therapy.
