Yesterday I posted a link to a great article by Benedict Evans on the importance of curation for small retailers. Put simply, it’s the only way they can compete against the near-infinite inventory of the giants. If you know exactly what you want then Amazon is incredible. But if you need some help finding just the right floor lamp for your living room from the 6,566 they currently have for sale… well, good luck with that.
And as it turns out, the same issue is at play in the media. We’ve never had so much choice when it comes to deciding what to watch or read or hear. And that’s both awesome and frustrating. Sometimes you just want some direction. Enter what Tal Shachar and Liam Boluk call the Influencer Curator:
Over the past century, technological advancements have massively reduced the cost and time needed to create and circulate content. Though this has liberated artists, consumers are now drowning in a virtually infinite supply of things to watch, listen to and read. The answer to a world where attention is the key constraint, not capital or distribution, isn’t Big Media – it’s the Influencer Curator.
Read their article here – it has some fascinating charts showing the explosion in available content to support their argument.
