kenekaplan KenEKaplan, Media, Social Media, Socialmedia

My Quick Take on Content Curation

Baseball card of Pete Wood.
Image via Wikipedia

Smells like a trend, but it’s something people have been doing for a long time, only the tools are changing, sparking all kinds of inspiration.

Forever people have been curating things they care about like albums, CDs, art, books, baseball cards.. Nowadays I’m collecting more things online from news, info on particular topics, photos and videos thanks to Internet tools Flipboard, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Pearl Trees.

One of my favorites is Scoop.It, who asked me to describe what inspires me to curate and share my interests.  Please give it a read and let me know your approach to curating.

Lord of Curation Series — Ken Kaplan

–What is curation to you?

Curation is an act of discovery and expression that collectively, at anytime, reveals a digital mosaic of who you are and who you are becoming. I curate news articles, tech reviews, tips for photography and video making, and stories about people doing innovative things. This is content I identify myself with or want to be identified with and share with the world.

When I was a kid, I liked collecting baseball cards. I’d aim for getting as many different cards depicting my favorite players. Next I’d work on getting each player to complete the roster of my favorite teams. Curating content stirs inside me a similar desire to collect, absorb, organize and share or trade with friends. When I’m curating information and media online, I’m collecting bits and pieces of I need to grow my interests. These pieces somehow reflect of my personality, values and knowledge that I’d like to share with the world.

-What is your best curating secret?

My curiosity and appreciation is revealed through content I curate. Learning from and sharing with others is the best part of anything worthwhile in the world. The secret is to remember what it feels like to inspire and be inspired.

-How has curation enriched your social media experience?

Curating is a love-of-information sport that at times has been bittersweet. It has drawn me away from my love for reading newspapers andmagazines, yet it has introduced me to interesting people who are on the pulse of topics I find important like video production, photography, journalism and the tech industry.

Reading or consuming then actively curating content takes time, but now this can be done seamlessly if not simultaneously. Consume and curate is the new read, rip and share that I still do when I read newspapers or magazines.  The difference is speed and scale: read more quickly and share with more people. Digital curation is allowing me to read and understand more than ever. I’m also collecting, organizing and adding my own relevance and insights then sharing with anyone who shares my interests. On the flipside, I can try to sharpen or balance my point of view by looking for curated content that is critical to my tastes.

-Movin’Ahead demonstrates your great knowledge and interest for the Italian culture. How did this topic become your passion?

Italy is a special place in my life because of the true love in my life, my wife and children. My wife was born and raised in Italy, while I’m a Northern California kid. Together we face the challenges and benefits of a bi-cultural family.

My blog was born out of a deep seeded desire for working things out and moving ahead to the finer things in life. Getting stuck or bogged down by confrontation, opposing views or filibusters often can crack open opportunities for thoughtful criticism and reflection, but inevitably things move ahead. Keeping in mind the finer things in life — past, present and future – helps me move ahead in the right direction.

With some regret, I have done less thoughtful writing and more whimsical photo and video sharing on my blog. But one constant theme in my blog through the years has been my fascination with Italy’s amazing culture and awesome eye candy. Each year, we visit family in Italy, typically spending summers in Calabria, where tragedy, comedy and history are part of daily life. One of my dreams is to visit many of the small towns across Calabria, capturing photos, dialect and folklore that make each place unique then write tight, visually telling stories that inspire more people to come see for themselves. Someday!

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kenekaplan Blogs, KenEKaplan, Media, Social Media, Socialmedia, Web 2.0

Unleash your curation creativity: 4 cool storytelling tools — SocialFish

Via Scoop.it – Real-Time News Curation

I’ve been playing with a slew of storytelling tools lately.

These are curation tools for publishing – in other words, not just curation as in filtering information for yourself, but curation in order to blog about some particular “story” or present content in a visually interesting way for other people to look at. For all of these tools, you pull content from your social streams and arrange them in a particular way, like…
Show original

kenekaplan Intel, Media, New York, Second Life, Social Media, Tech, video

Rocketboom Tech Success Story

Four, three, two, one…Rocketboom went live on YouTube this week, one of only a handful of pioneering online video shows picked by Google to help preview the new YouTube Live service.  

Rocketbom did a fun promo featuring bloopers:

Success doesn’t happen over night but it can happen pretty quickly when you have great talent, inspiring teammates and the wonder-pace of the Internet.  Rocketboom was created by the talented producer Andrew Baron in 2004.  I true pioneer in online episodic video production, Baron has evolved things beyond a daily Internet culture newscast Rocketboom to include Know Your Meme, Rocketboom Tech and Rocketboom NYC.  And he continues to explore and develop new technologies — like his innovative video aggregator Magma (more on Magma here) and new business models that bring together the best of video storytelling and the Internet.

I got to meet Andrew in 2008 thanks to an introduction by Pop17‘s Sarah Austin, at the time an Intel Insider social media advisor. After hiring him to create a few technology-related segments for Intel, together we worked up an plan for a regular show which became Rocketboom Tech, launched in early 2008.  Hosted by Ellie Rountree, Rocketboom Tech gets the inside scoop on innovations and innovators bringing exciting technologies to our daily lives. 

Ellie has met up with amazing people from NASA, Second Life, Intel Labs, the Consumer Electronics Show and even futurists and pyschologists exploring how technology can help relieve stress from our daily lives.

During that time, my team inside Intel and I have had the chance to work behind the scenes on story development and to learn production and editing tricks that have become Rocketboom signatures.  We even got to visit their snazzy new studios in New York.

Kenyatta Cheese, Ellie Rountree and Ken E Kaplan at the Rocketboom Studios in New York, NY

In September, I traveled to New York to host the Intel Insiders Summit gathering of social media advisors.  I was able to take some time to talk with Ellie Rountree on camera, as I wanted to capture the glee of excitement she was feeling about some of the new changes inside Rocketboom.  And how she’s been able to develop a show launched with sponsorship support from my team at Intel.

Ellie’s a great producer and talent.  It’s not hard to image that someday soon, she’ll be a star not only on Rocketboom but in other consumer technology shows playing in our future Smart TVs!

kenekaplan Intel, Media, Tech, Uncategorized

PRESS KIT – Intel at CES 2010

via intel.com

This is one of the most robust online media kits we’ve built, culling livestream video, many photos and videos shot by employees, integrated Twitter and news/information prior to and during the event as technology announcements were released at the Consumer Electronics Show. I’m fired up to have such a great Pressroom architect behind the scenes @PatrickDarling who was able to pull in our Livestream video presentations (i.e. Intel CEO Keynote), and pull in videos I was shooting and uploading from the Intel booth and beyond. We even collaborated on the banner of the site, which features a photo I shot with my Canon G9 on the afternoon prior to the opening of CES. Excellent, inspiring teamwork.

Posted via web from kenekaplan’s posterous

kenekaplan Blogs, Media, video

Boom! Goes the Dynamite on Rocketboom

Breaking into TV or any media for that matter requires…well…a big break. Sometimes the big break is a chance to let the good, bad and ugly out to dry. Lesson here, share your personality…even if it means you’re nervous and can’t read the teleprompter with live cameras gunning at you.

kenekaplan Journalism, Media

100-Year-Young Christian Science Monitor’s Move Online

Here is another great Jennifer Jones’ “Marketing Voices” interview.

John Yemma, the new editor of the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) which is celebrating its 100th year anniversary in 2008, told Marketing Voices’s Jennifer Jones how his publication is blending the roles of the online version with the print version. Although they are shifting most resources to the web, the CSM will have a print version as Yemma believes print has a place in the future of journalism. The CSM is seeking journalists who have a web background in addition to being journalists—quite a talent to find.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2008/10/PID_013802/Podtech_Marketing_Voices__Interview_wi.mp3&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/5411/the-role-of-online-journalism-insights-from-the-editor-of-christian-science-monitor&totalTime=640000&breadcrumb=4c3039a7c5034430b4997b3cfc6cd049]

kenekaplan Blogs, Marketing, Media, Research, Social Media, Web 2.0

Blog, Feed & Socialize

I just read a nifty report released on February 6 by Forrester’s social computing wise Charlene Li — “How Consumers Find Web Sites: Social Tools Play A Significant Role For Youth.”
Often we “know” what we ought to do today to build for tomorrow, but seeing results of surveys and hearing recommendations based on those findings gives us fodder we need to influence people and convince them to support our efforts.
Here are some things from Charlene’s report that I’m seeing happen already inside Intel…things that we are working to refine and disperse as best practices to other groups as they become more active with their online audiences/communities.
clipped from www.forrester.com
Blogs help with search rankings in several ways: Comments on blogs provide more content to index; frequent updates mean that the search engine’s Web crawlers come more often; and inbound links from other blogs and sites mean higher relevancy scores in algorithms.
Services like FeedBurners’ FeedFlare and Bazaarvoice’s ShareThis automatically insert links into blog posts, content pages, and product pages, making it simple to tag or share on sites like Facebook, Digg, and del.icio.us.
Investments in MySpace.com and Facebook will reach not only a quarter of the online youth population, but also support natural word of mouth and email, which are top sources of site referrals for youth. The key is tracking where traffic originates — for example, from a note posted on Facebook — as well as the channel, be it from a blog, email, or word of mouth. Use services from providers like Hitwise and Compete to map traffic patterns of your target customers.
  blog it
kenekaplan Media, Social Media, Web 2.0

Secret to Sucess? It’s All in the New Media Family List

 Saw this New Media Family List on Amy Webb’s MyDigiMedia blog and thought it was pretty cool.  Highlights from her post, where you can download a bigger PDF file and take a closer look:

In the six months since I first created the chart, there are a handful of notable updates:

  • AOL’s list has grown tremendously, while Google, News Corp and IAC have remained relatively unchanged.
  • AOL is heading strong into behavioral targeting and various ad network options.
  • Yahoo’s buy early and large strategy toned down considerably in Q3 and Q4 of 2007.
  • Google’s last acquisition was Postini early last fall.
  • Though I’m not tracking this on the chart, News Corp has also been selling lots of assets – namely local television stations.

Here’s the new Who Owns What page at mydigimedia. Download the new chart (PDF) here. And if you want to read my original post and learn more about why I started tracking all this to begin with, have a look here.

kenekaplan Events, Jeremiah Owyang, Media, Social Media, TV, Twitter

Twitter Vote for Favorite Super Bowl TV Ads

Jeremiah Owyag ignited a Super Bowl Twitterthon and many are stepping in to use social media to engage more with the Super Bowl. Join the fun and Twitter your take on the TV ads hitting you on Super Bowl Sunday.

Instructions below and pre-game buzz here.

There’s just three steps:


1) Sign up: Get a twitter account, got that? Good.

2) Send your vote to @superbowlads: When we’re watching the game in real time, simply send a reply to superbowlads. I created this Twitter account just for this virtual event. Reply to the superbowlads account, name the commerical, and give it a rating of 1-5 stars, 5 being the best.

examples:

“@superbowlads That Pepsi commercial was funny 4 stars”

“@superbowlads The Hillary Clinton advertisement was bunko 2 stars”

“@superbowlads Bud-wise-er, that was so 10 years ago, weak. 1 star”

3) See what others rated: You can then see everyone who’s rated the ads by doing a search on any of the Twitter search tools, I like Terraminds. See this example, it’s showing all the people who have replied to superbowlads.

My friend Rohit also is rallying people to engage online in new ways with the Super Bowl.

kenekaplan Marketing, Media, PodTech, Social Media, video

Traditional vs. New Media with CNET’s Rafe Needleman at CES BlogHaus 2008

Jennifer Jones’ “Marketing Voices” caught CNET’s Rafe Needleman at the PodTech BlogHaus at CES 2008. Needleman tells how CNET’s doin’ their thing and shares his views on “traditional” versus new media. Jones and Needleman discuss the frustration of journalists who wish many of the bloggers had more academic training and knowledge.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2008/01/PID_013329/Podtech_MV_CES2008_Rafe_Needleman.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/4877/cnets-needleman-on-his-views-of-traditional-versus-new-media&totalTime=502000&breadcrumb=27aa48f693354041b3ee8647c200233c]