One area of study that students may not normally consider is a religious major, but if you are a religious or spiritual student, you can focus your education on your beliefs. There are several religious majors that students can choose from and contrary to what you might think, choosing a major in religion doesn’t mean you are restricted to being a minister or doing missionary work for your entire career. Some religious majors are for working in a church capacity, but not all. Religion major students can have a career in law, consulting, politics, writing and teaching, and a whole host of  other career paths.

Major will vary depending what school you choose to attend, and even schools that were founded as religious institutions will have classes infused with religious curriculum no matter what major you choose. Do you research to find the best school for both your beliefs and education.

Some of the various majors related to religion include:

• Religious Studies: Includes a rational study of religious history and modern religions of the world, along with religious issues.
• Islamic Law and Theology: Offers students intense teaching in the Islamic law of the Quran.
• Biblical Studies: Offers an in depth study of the bible and its history.
• Theology: Gives training in the area of religious leadership. Theology also offers in depth knowledge of the theories and practices of the particular religion studied.
• Missionary Studies: Focuses on learning to plant new churches in other countries throughout the world. This field may teach about various cultures that you will encounter as well as details about various world religions.

Source: Descygna

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Recent college grands are facing underemployment  or “malemployment,” meaning that they are working at jobs that do not require a college degree.  Professor of Economics at Northeastern University Andrew Sum estimates that during the first half of 2010, more than 50 percent of young B.A.-holders were employed at jobs requiring a college degree.

“This growing problem of malemployment and joblessness among young college graduates has a number of dire economic effects on both the graduates themselves and many other young adults across the country,” writes Sum for The Huffington Post. “Those college graduates working in jobs that do not require college degrees are earning substantially less per week (30-40 percent less) than their peers who work in jobs that require college degrees.” Not only do lower salaries represent poor returns on the resources invested in acquiring a degree, it also sends negative messages to high school students and other young people entering college.

Source: Margaret

National PTA President, Charles J. “Chuck” Saylors announced, “It’s no secret that we have a childhood obesity epidemic in this country. Statistics show that over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled and nearly one in three American children is overweight or obese. So, we’re proud of all the PTAs across the country who are taking the initiative to keep our kids healthy.”

We are too, Chuck. It’s time for everyone to stop complaining and talk about possible solutions. It’s time to take charge and fix this problem. We have to remember that obesity is nearly 100 percent preventable.

The purpose of this grant is to promote healthy lifestyles through good nutrition and physical activities. Research has shown that the health of our children significantly effects their over-all happiness and success in life. The PTA Healthy Lifestyles Grant Program is working to increase the awareness of that. They are engaging families and students across the country to provide healthier meal options and active lifestyle opportunities.

Parent Teacher Associations throughout the nation were given the opportunity to submit grant proposals. Their mission was to dictate a plan that would motivate families toward a healthy and active lifestyle. Nutrition classes and community gardens were among the many activities being coordinated.

After reviewing the grant proposals, The National PTA has announced that the following PTAs will receive up to $1,000 in grants:

• Arroyo High School PTSA; El Monte, California
• Barcroft Elementary PTA; Arlington, Virginia
• Broadmor Elementary PTA; Tempe, Arizona
• Comanche Elementary PTA; Overland Park, Kansas
• El Marina Language School PTA; Culver City, California
• Hopkins Road Elementary PTA; Richmond, Virginia
• Huy Elementary PTA; Columbus, Ohio
• John R. Beatty PTA; Las Vegas, Nevada
• Kennedy Elementary PTA; Fargo, North Dakota
• Lowell PTA; Missoula Montana
• Luther Jones PTA; Corpus Christi, Texas
• Mableton Elementary PTA; Mableton, Georgia
• MacArthur Academy PTA; Southfield Michigan
• Madrona PTSA Seattle Council; Seattle, Washington
• Martin Elementary School PTA; Parkersburg, West Virginia
• Meadowvale Elementary PTA; Havre De Grave, Maryland
• Miami Lakes K-8 PTSA; Miami Lakes, Florida
• Michigamme Elementary PTA; Port Huron, Michigan
• Pine Forest PTA; Jacksonville, Florida
• Potterville Public Schools; Potterville Michigan
• Price Elementary PTA; Louisville, Kentucky
• Tesuque Elementary PTA; Tesuque, New Mexico

The National PTA is a group of parents, teachers, students, families and community leaders. Membership is open to anyone who wants to dedicate their time and resources to the success of our children.

Source: Theresa

Photo credit: ozgurdonmaz

After having analyzed what are the reasons that are making content curation a necessity, and having illustrated what are the tools, skills, processes and workflow needed to realize such curation, it is time now to explore a bit the business side of things too.

Can real-time news and content curation provide enough value and unique content to potential readers to make it possible for curators to charge for access or for complementary services?

This is what I have set myself to find out. By scouting and researching what has been written on this topic and by tapping on my own experience and intuition, I have prepared this “curated” guide to the business side of news and content curation.

In it you can find, often in the original words of who had it, the best insight and ideas on this topic, and what are the key drivers, opportunities and trends to pay active attention to.

Here all the details:

Real-Time News Curation: Part 7 – Business Opportunities

1. Where Is The Money

2. Key Business Drivers

3. Business Applications: The News

4. Business Opportunities / Future Trends

5. Business Models

1) Where Is The Money?

“So here’s a prediction.

Barring legal hurdles, one day we will see the likes of the Drudge go behind a pay-wall even if most of the content they link to is free.

If you are a publisher and you don’t have enough good content to compete with the aggregators, you need to start linking out.“

Want Loyal Readers? Then Aggregate – Nico Flores

News channels in the near future will have no reason, incentive or advantage in trying to replicate what they do now: giving coverage to a handful of topics and stories out of the whole spectrum of news out there.

The very goal of trying to satisfy the greatest number of readers while keeping an often undisclosed political and business agenda will give enormous competitive advantage to new independent content sources which have built their following on deep trust, full disclosure and opinionated dedication to a very specific topic, issue.

As demand for quality, topic-specific news and information becomes the real of every individual and not just of those operating in the stock market, a universe of opportunities for monetizing high-quality and high-value topic-specific information will likely appear.

The fact alone that there is such a fast-growing universe of content curation tools becoming available, and that many of these are not free, should indicate that there is a fast growing need for these type of solutions and that there publishers and companies willing to pay for them.

Often those who are discovering the idea of news and content curation for the first time, see only the aspect of automatic aggregation, filtering and republication of content headlines and excerpts coming from other sources as being the revolutionary idea. The benefit they see right away is represented by the idea of sitting back and having great content published on their site on auto-pilot.

In fact, while this is indeed a possible true and tangible benefit (and tools are getting much better at doing this, almost unassisted), there is so much greater value and business opportunities that can be reaped when, true human curation is applied, allowing information and resources that were disconnected and hard to find, to become part of a story, collection, toolkit, report or guide.

2) Key Business Drivers for Real-Time News and Content Curation

 

1) Too Much Information

There is too much information out there and to find what is relevant to one’s interest it takes more and more effort.

“The time it takes to follow and go through multiple web sites and blogs takes tangible time, and since most sources publish or give coverage to more than one topic, one gets to browse and scan through lots of useless content just for the sake of finding what is relevant to his specific interest.

Even in the case of power-users utilizing RSS feed readers, aggregators and filters, the amount of junk we have to sift through daily is nothing but impressive, so much so, that those who have enough time and skills to pick the gems from that ocean of tweets, social media posts and blog posts, enjoy a fast increasing reputation and visibility online.”

“No matter whether you see it as ” information overload” or ” filter failure” the key fact here is that there is so much information being produced out there, that it is next to impossible to follow or keep up with just about any specific topic, without spending considerable amounts of time looking at irrelevant stuff.

That is the the essence.

To make the issue even more frustrating, no matter how much junk you go through, you may still be missing on some important news story or product announcement just because there are so many sources to look up and it becomes physically impossible to scan them all.

There is indeed much more food than we can chew.

And so, we start relying on a few trusted sources to do the heavy lifting for us, and to bring back to us what we really need not to be missing.”

Real-Time News Curation: Why We Need It

 

2) People Trust Their Friends More Than Big Name Journalists

Distrust in mainstream media reporting has been a key characterizing trait of this past decade, as the majority of traditional publishers and reporters have failed to adapt to the new information ecosystem generated by the Internet and to the need from people to want to dig, quuestion and even interact and contribute with those who make the stories. And with the rise of independent media in the form of blogs, RSS feeds and new small independent publishers, individuals craving for higher quality information have started searching and digging the news sources themselves, becoming in their own personal universe, personal curators and editors of their own news.

Since the year 2000 social media technologies have given the opportunity to these active news consumers and reporters, to become also sharers-publishers of their curated discoveries, and in this way, some of them have gradually become highly trusted and relevant information sources for those sharing their same interests. Robert Scoble, for those who follow new technologies is great example of this. And this is why a growing number of people trusts more their “expert” online friends, than the popular media sources.

“There is value in content, and there is value in aggregation, but there is limited value in providing the two together.

The value that I get from the ‘aggregator’ publications that I follow is rarely to do with their content and mostly to do with their aggregation – i.e. with their links.

When they write too much content they are not giving me value – they are wasting my time.

By ‘aggregating the aggregators’ Google would not just be doing its users a favour. It would also help reward original content creators. Yes, mainstream media may stand to benefit from this, and if so that is their due (and yes, some pay-walls would get money from this). But it would also benefit anyone with something genuinely interesting to say.

As to those who have nothing to say but lots to aggregate, I say two things: First, you started this, so you can’t complain about being aggregated away. Second, as far as I’m concerned, you have little to worry about. My loyalty is to you, not to content creators, and this is worth money.

You can show me advertisements, invite me to events and tell me about jobs. You can do this better than anyone because good aggregation is a great way of reaching a professional niche.

Just don’t think it’s about your content. It’s not that sort of relationship.

In fact, take it out, make me happier and save some costs.”

Nico Flores – A Feature Request for Google Reader: Aggregate the Aggregators

 

3) Curators Add Value and Provide a Key Competitive Advantage

“I’m one of those who argue for the higher value of editors.

My reasoning is simple: Online news is a competitive business.

Given competition, readers will choose between news sources based on perspective, voice, and quality. It is editors that craft and maintain voice and quality. Thus, they (as curators), will form the core of a news source’s competitive advantage.

Good writers are necessary but not sufficient. Their work cannot be distinguished in a sea of searchable articles without the handiwork of a good curator.

On the other hand, as we’ve seen from numerous examples of “curated” link lists, aggregated news services, (HuffingtonPost…), etc. a good curator can build a competitive advantage even without on-staff writers.

Thus, curators seem to be both necessary and sufficient to build competitive advantage.”

Bob Wyman – Comment on No News is No News

 

4) People Want True Stories, Straight From The Source

People would like to hear and see more stories coming straight form the source, without too much editorial intervention to package in ways to make it interesting and digestible for everyone. But to get deep into content and straight to the sources you need to bypass mainstream media and find the gems of reporting and insight that float inside social networks, research papers, collaborative wikis and blogs. It is in this space that there is opportunity for those news explorers that know how to move into the information jungle to bring back only valuable gems and memorable stories.

 

5) People Don’t Care Who Has Written It or Where It Sits

People want good, valuable, selected information. They don’t care who has written it or where it comes from.

“The big elephant in the room with publishers, in my opinion, is how long do they hold onto their own content and their own audience, versus this consumer demand for, ‘I don’t really care where it came from as long as you can tell me where it came from and that it’s credible…’”

Will Hunsinger – CEO Evri – How Publishers Curate World Content

 

6) News Information Has Become a Commodity

“General interest news is like the tip of an iceberg, something that any online news producer can match. This brings gradually the general interest news production value to near zero, as it approximates becoming a full commodity.

That is why general interest news cannot and should not be monetized. Rather it should be used to build visibility, exposure and to build additional revenue via advertising approaches.”

Bill Densmore – What exactly is newspaper premium content? That’s not the point

 

7) There Is Strong Demand for Specific, Niche Information

People want to know. But they want to evaluate, question and decide on their own. Finding something on Google is easy, but finding an answer to a topic, a doubt or an interest requires a different level of information support. Whether you are thinking about individuals needing expert curated information and advice on health, or professional ice-skating it makes little difference. The demand is now for those who can provide organized access to all of the valuable information that is out there, and not just to their personal reporting and commentary.

 

Learning Demand

There is a growing number of jobs in which the ability to stay up-to-date with industry developments, new legislation, new tools, new business opportunities dos make the difference between those who succeed and those who do not.

 

9) Beyond News To Information Bundles That Are Useful, Valuable, Applicable

“News has become grist for an array of increasingly personalized and targeted services. What’s the value of grist – flour – compared to a baked good?

The services we sell have to be more than the grist, although the grist is an essential ingredient. We can’t sell grist; we have to sell the baked goods.”

 

10) Exposure Visibility Authority

A high quality thematic, topic-specific newsfeed that covers the niche or the industry in which a company operates provides prominence, visibility, exposure, prestige allowing it even to become gradually an “authority” in that field.

I mean, if a company is able to produce news feeds that are the best resources on the specific “vertical” it curates, no matter which technology, tool or process they use to achieve this, not only it achieves the above goals, including extra organic visibility in the search engines and a higher linkup rate from outside sources, but it also gradually becomes an information authority.

By creating complementary services and content areas around this specific vertical interest area, such as grassroots commentary, opinion, forums, live events or conferences, which all build on top of the content created by this curated content channel, then there is all the opportunity to naturally become the authority, the point of reference for others to go within that field of interest.

4) Business Applications: The News

What will newspapers and magazines do with the new opportunities that news and content curation offer?

Will the newsroom of the future change to make space for curators too?

“…many “reporters” today don’t really do what is described as reporting…

That is, they often do try to take wire copy or stories that were written elsewhere, and go through the wasted process of “re-reporting” them just to pretend it’s a new and unique story for that publication.

In many ways, this is a waste of resources. What would be better is if they actually encouraged #3 above — let a “curator” handle that sort of news.”

The Role Of Curation In Journalism

Gerd Leonhard – Future of news – The Importance of Curation

Duration: 1′:4”

The Newsroom of The Future

- Reporters (Journalists + bloggers): they don’t “cover” news, they don’t replicate press agencies wires, they bring original stories. They go on the real or virtual ground. They publish with a large array of rhythms: live tweeting, articles, videos, data, in-depth investigation… They can also manage a community of bloggers / users with whom they can co-produce the news.

- Curators (journalists + amateurs) : they “cover” the news by sorting, verifying and editing live everything good existing on the web and in the media. They make link journalism, they make the news more accessible.

- Columnists (bloggers, journalists, experts): they start conversations and give stories another perspective.

Towards the Google Newsroom – A Revolution for Media

“The new model for news curation and selection, I feel, will be a balance of professional editing and collaborative news filtering.

In one incarnation, news organizations will look at feeds from highly respected news fans, and that will drive stories that are featured more prominently.”

Craig Newmark – A Nerd’s Take On The Future Of News Media

Other likely business uses of news curation work will be in:

• Business intelligence
• Competitive analysis
• Professional updates
• Trend spotting

I foresee the rise of editorial brands.

“Curated channels” will vie for popularity instead of individual blogs.

People will pay a premium if they trust they’re being directed to the right stuff.

Comment by Jay Cross on The Birth of the Newsmaster – MasterNewMedia (2004)

Other Business Application Examples

1) Organizedwisdom.com – Expert Curators

OrganizedWisdom is a new service which taps into the knowledge of its expert curators
to provide valuable information, news and insight specifically interested in health issues.

You can read in more detail the strategy and business model of OrganizedWisdom right here:

http://organizedwisdom.com/OrganizedWisdom:About

2) Seth Godin talks about the content curation business application Squidoo

Duration: 2′:43″

3) Tip of the iceberg vs. deep news

“Consider legal news…

There is a massive tip of the iceberg market for general interest news about major cases (O.J. Simpson, various rapes, etc.) but, there is a vibrant market (satisfied by organizations like the Bureau of National Affairs, Commerce Clearinghouse, etc.) that sells news about the law to folk in the business of law.

In the pharmaceutical business, a good story on Viagra is always fun in the realm of “tip of the iceberg,” but there are also a variety of specialist publishers who crank out dozens of stories every day to a small but well paying audience.

The same market division applies whether you’re talking about pork bellies, the computer business, or State House politics.

You monetize “tip of the iceberg” with advertising, you monetize the deep-news market with premium pricing for access, conference attendance, lectures, newsletters, alerts, specialized books, annual reviews, etc.”

Mike Shatzkin – Aggregation and curation: two concepts that explain a lot about digital change

4) George Siemens: The Business Value and Role Of The Newsmaster / News Curator Model

Duration: 6′:27″

5) Business Directions / Future Trends

a) Making sense – Story-Telling – Showing the Big Picture

The name of the game when it comes to the future of consuming information is “making sense“. We do not lack information, sources, variety, differing viewpoints and unmediated reports. They are all available out there. But they are difficult to get to, and we are just starting to learn how to bring together, organize and present this “organic” bundles of information in an effective way. Search engines, though in a perfect position to play a role into this, are not yet equipped to help us out. This is where news and content curators come into play, by finding, aggregating and bringing together rare and valuable pieces of content, while organizing and juxtaposing them in ways that help tell a story we can understand. Sense-makers: this is what curators are. And, as readers increasingly demand the “whole picture” on a subject, we will need more people, tools and services to help us take on effectively this challenging task.

 

b) Niche Info From Trusted Sources

What an increasing number of people want today is “quality information, news and resources” on very specific topics from a handful of highly trusted, opinionated, human sources. Trust in “industry” “trade publications” has been sliding away on and off-line as people have been increasingly losing trust in the brands reporting and being reported, for an evident lack of transparency and disclosure of the commercial terms over which much such publications decided what to cover or not. People prefer to get the special-interest news they are highly interested in from people they trust and respect and with whom they can feel they could have a direct line of communication and exchange.

 

c) Visual Curation

Making sense of things, on whichever topic you are confronted with, requires looking at different pieces of information, viewpoints, data. Recounting, summarizing, explaining and illustrating this rich information texture, by using only lineat text, can be highly limiting. News and content curators will need to rely heavily on tools that help them “summarize“, “index“, and provide a “bird’s eye view” on a topic, before diving into the specifics of it. In this light visual communication, mapping and diagramming tools will likely play a very important role both in helping newsmasters organize and layout their content but also in giving them new and powerfrul ways to illustrate it effectively to their audiences.

 

d) Topic-Specific / Highly Vertical Interests

“Publishers will start to produce curated, topical or thematic content “feeds” for their target audiences. For example, consumers will be able to subscribe to curated sports feeds for the latest news about their favorite teams or athletes or gadget feeds covering digital cameras or iPad news.

Publishers will also offer more engaging (and valued) user experiences for consumers who “opt-in” to these personalized, filtered feeds providing convenient updates wherever consumers go. Think a better version of Google Alerts — curated by skilled editors from your favorite publisher and available anywhere (Facebook, Twitter, MyYahoo, iPad, iPhone etc.).”

Matthew Kumin / GigaOM – The Web of Intent is Coming (Sooner Than You Think)

 

e) Location Specific

News channels in the future will also be location specific, allowing readers to subscribe to the news streams that really match their specific interest based on the location they are at.

 

f) Collaborative Filtering and Sharing

Curation is a complex, multidisciplinary challenge, requiring much time, patience and special skills. Identifying sources, selecting and editing content, finding relevant images, crediting and referencing, are just a few of the many tasks a news curator needs to carry out. The opportunity for multiple subject-matter experts to collaborate on curating a specific news channel, issue, topic or event can certainly provide additional value and quality. Given the emerging features of curation services supporting small curation teams and the widespread availability of online collaboration tools it is only a matter of time before such opportunity becomes a necessity for pubishers and a valuable opportunity for marketers, advertisers and companies alike.

 

g) User Personalization

Consumers will be able to customize these feeds across topics or stories, prioritize sources, receive recommendations and discover new content via their friends and social graph. New forms of social sharing (community) will emerge organized around consumer’s interests and the curated feeds they subscribe to.”

Matthew Kumin / GigaOM – The Web of Intent is Coming (Sooner Than You Think)

 

h) Capturing and Preserving Unique Events and Interactions

Another emerging trend is the one of capturing and preserving the multi-dimensional content, information, images and other media being generated and exchanged during a live event. Preserving and curating the universe of artifacts emerging from any unique event is certainly a way to create evergreen content value and more opportunities for business around the event.

 

i) The Curation is the Branding

“Newspapers are obviously aggregators and curators. The differences in their curation create their brand. The New York Times leaves out the comics. The New York Post leaves out the multi-syllable words. The Daily News beefs up its sports section and, for years, was known for having the best pictures.

But one thing has been common to all of them and to all other newspapers: they cover the waterfront. (I have called that being “horizontal.”) They aggregate news of the world, the nation, and the city with sports, weather, stock quotes, advice to the lovelorn, and many other things.

They sell almost all their advertising against the aggregate and against the brand, not against any specific item or interest being aggregated. And the competition for each paper is against other curated aggregates.

Newspapers can sell the curated aggregate to people who don’t want most of it because the total price is a good deal for the parts they want, just like the album was a good deal even if you only liked some of the songs. Or they could.

But now they are suffering precisely the same fate as the record album. The unit of appreciation is smaller than the whole. And for each unit of appreciation — each ball score, stock price, report from Washington, or political cartoon — there is a whole host of new competition.

So the long story short on newspapers is this: a business model of selling a horizontal (many-subject) aggregate, curated by something other than subject, was based on the economics of a physical world where aggregation produced efficiencies of production and distribution.

The Internet changed that.

It is no longer necessary for an aggregator to provide news to deliver me sports, or to provide a whole newspaper to deliver me the weather or a stock quote.

Horizontal aggregation was more efficient in a world of physical delivery.

Vertical aggregation makes more sense in a world of digital delivery.

And enabling the customer or user to have some control over the curation is possible in the digital world but hardly is in the physical.”

Mike Shatzkin – Aggregation and curation: two concepts that explain a lot about digital change

 

j) From General to Specific – Niche – Vertical

From generalist, a bit-of-everything type of news coverage that we have seen spreading from mainstream to tech blogs and aggregators, to specific, vertical, niche news channels, hubs and feeds. General interest news it’s a commodity and can be found anywhere. It’s value added contribution is rapidly decreasing, as any individual can now get his personalized general interest news load straight from his curated set of sources inside his custom start page, Google reader and through his different social media channels (Facebook and Twitter mainly).

 

k) The Curator Is The New Producer-Distributor

The emerging curator / newsmaster is in fact the new producer-distributor of content as, in an fast growing ocean of content, it is the curator that gives valuable content proper visibility, reference and context. Not search engines (at least so far).

 

l) Greater Open-Mindedness Toward Letting Content Be Shared and Re-Distributed

“What is needed… for professional news organizations to succeed in online content licensing is a system that encourages the distribution of their content through the most efficient and popular channels available at any given moment.

Instead of fighting your audience, empower and encourage your audiences to be distributors of your content – and help them to profit from it as well.”

“…the news of today – and tomorrow – needs to collect the best content from whatever source…”

“You can have some exclusive content, to be sure, but exclusivity alone cannot power success. This can be seen clearly in how information providers in the financial industry are required to aggregate content from as many different sources as possible to help information-hungry decision makers.”

John Blossom – http://www.masternewmedia.org/online-news-content-and-distribution-strategies-content-curation-and-user-syndication-are-next/

 

m) Building Passionate Communities Around Specific Interests

As individuals learn and find new ways to match up people having great affinities with their interests and passions thrugh social media, opportunities for creating vertical content communities around very specific interest will grow exponentially. While this is a long established trend online, curation and curators may bring the efficiency, order and organization that often gets highly diluted inside existing community hubs and forums.
“Curation is about matching context and content to the right audience.”

http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2008/01/20/video-vortex-curating-online-video/

 

n) Scaling Oneself With Curation

For many small and medium-sized online publishers the rush against a growing competition of content producers has become a nightmare. Producing quality content is very expensive and time consuming and competing in terms of quantity, coverage and breadth with new and existing publishers has become a losing battle. For those who have mastered the blogging paradigm, or those who have the ability to produce quality content, reviews and analysis, curation offers the opportunity to “scale operations and content quality up“.

Scaling operations up means transforming your online publising role from one of exclusive contributor and content writer to the one of an aggregator/filter/selector of the best news/content coming from anywhere and serving a very specific audience/target/interest..

“For those that claim that mainstream media brands and content can’t be matched by the long tail, they misunderstand the point and purpose of personal publishing and storytelling.

The impulse (and the outcome) is not to replace polished, professional and well told stories.

The point is that people trust their friends more than they trust journalists or companies.

The point is that today, you can get your news directly from the person living the incident.

The point is that there is a hunger for authentic first hand accounts, niche subject matter and opinion.”

Chris Saad – Essay: Real-Time Storytelling

 

o) Active Engagement

“Publishers will also offer more engaging (and valued) user experiences for consumers who “opt-in” to these personalized, filtered feeds providing convenient updates wherever consumers go. Think a better version of Google Alerts – curated by skilled editors from your favorite publisher and available anywhere (Facebook, Twitter, MyYahoo, iPad, iPhone etc.).

Matthew Kumin / GigaOM – The Web of Intent is Coming (Sooner Than You Think)

6) Curation Business Models

Which are the business models that can be applied to the real-time news curation universe? How are existing services and vendors in this industry monetizing their offerings?

Here a few leads:

a) Charging for Curation Services and Tools
Many of the news and content curation tools available, charge a tangible fee, monthly subscrition to give you access to their offerings. So, it seems clear, by simply looking at the number of tools and curation services and at their monetization strategy that many of these companies do believe that there is a strong and growing demand for these tools and that the benefits that auto-aggregation, filtering and republication of quality selected content can provide, at least for certain companies, be worth thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars per year.

b) Branded Curation
None of the existing content curation services leverages yet the power of quality niche curation channels to sell high-quality and highly-contextual sponsorship for those channels. That was the original idea behind Seth Godin’s Squidooo, but its implementation (with Google AdSense) leaves in my humble opinion lots to be desired.

c) It’s Not Just About Curating Content – Curating High-Value Lists of People
Curating list of high-quality, trusted and influential authorities in specific niche verticals will be increasingly worth a bunch. Such lists will have a growing demand from both people passionate about that specific topic as well as by those companies and organizations who want to gain visibility and exposure in a vertical and want to know who are the influential people in that space to follow.

d) Value-Added Complementary Services
The opportunity here is in building value-added services, communities of interest and practices around specific vertical news channels.

“…The former news industry is now competing for the attention of users . . . of citizens . . . to be the most sophisticated “information valet” in their lives. If you save time, provide the best insight, help the user to do their job better or live their life more fully, you get their attention.

Again, noting Crosbie Fitch — the service is a performance.

If you perform well, you may be paid, by subscription, by click, or perhaps by advertisers who are pleased you have presented to them the attention of your users.”

Bill Densmore – What is exactly newspaper Premium content? That’s not the point

e) Need for Vertical Focus – Aggregation and Curation
There is a huge number of vertical interest niches that will need to be supported and served in the future as publishers, aggregators and curators start to realize their value and design their own solutions. SmartBrief is the best example of the power and potential of such type of business at work. Give a look at what this company is doing and you will get a much better idea of where we are headed with this.

“The ideas of “premium” and “General Interest” are incompatible. “General Interest” implies a large market and that alone ensures that competition will eliminate opportunities for premium pricing.

In the past, newspapers exploited geographic monopolies that allowed them to charge for delivering General Interest news. But, the Internet has eliminated barriers to entry into the business of delivering news…

Nonetheless, an organization that publishes General Interest news can still do a great business by also selling premium content… (Just not General Interest content.)

The issue is in how you structure the organization and how you view the structure of the market for information.

The key thing to understand is that “General Interest” really means “tip of the iceberg”…

Now, pick any industry, or any kind of “interest” in your community and you’ll see that there is a large market for “tip of the iceberg” news that will be free and there is a layering of additional markets that get progressively smaller but require more and more content and greater and greater expertise to satisfy.

Each of these markets can be a distinct source of revenue.”

Steve Outing – So What Is Exactly Newspaper Web Premium Content

“What we need is an “unwalled garden,” in which users are free to choose from an array of service providers, all of whom operate across a common platform, giving access to unique bundles within and outside their particular “unwalled garden.” And each unwalled garden needs to be hyper personalized — to use a phrase coined by Marissa Mayer of Google.

Each of these unwalled gardens may constitute the deep-news focus advocated by Bob Wyman, in his “tip-of-the-iceberg” analogy. He says general news is the tip of an iceberg, which every news producer can match, and which is therefore now a commodity, and not of value. But the hyper personalized, niche content — the “deep content” which my colleague Martin Langeveld notes is not even available on the web today because nobody can make money on it — is an untapped source of value to users as part of an overall “information valet” relationship.

In 1997 and earlier, I wrote that newspapers were going to face a train wreck once fat pipes came into the home and people could go anywhere for information. Newspapers, I wrote, would need to learn how to make money referring people to information from anywhere, sharing both users, and content.

Today, that is still the challenge.”

Bill Densmore – What is exactly newspaper Premium content? That’s not the point

“I’ve been saying that the more horizontal is the collection, the less likely it is to work in the digital world.

But, remember this: when you are looking for reasons to explain why a winner in print media is losing on the web, it almost certainly starts with aggregation and curation and how it needs to change to be optimal in the new digital environment.”

Mike Shatzkin – Aggregation and curation: two concepts that explain a lot about digital change

f) Getting Deeper into the News
Enough for the surface, light-type of news. You can get as much as you want it from all kinds of sources. What people, and especially those interested in paying to get more and better information, want the in-depth take at the stuff that interests them deeply.

“Let’s say you have a newspaper in New Jersey and you see your profits fall. What should you do?

I argue that instead of laying off most of your pharmaceutical and state house reporters, what you should be doing is hiring more of them and building a secondary revenue stream in the deep-news markets.

The way you get additional revenue is by going deeper into the news and thus deeper into the stack of news markets.

You then get your deep-news folk to bubble up to your general interest site a regular selection of the hot “tip-of-the-iceberg” stories that they cover while addressing the needs of the deep-news market.

But, don’t try to “sell” the tip-of-the-iceberg general interest news… Any attempt to do so will merely put you at a disadvantage to others who can easily enter the market.

Profit from your ability to provide deep-news and from your ability to generate general interest news as a side product of deep news.

(Note: Since you can’t build out and succeed in all areas of deep-news focus on those in which you have a particular expertise. Then, buy the “tip-of-the-iceberg” stuff from other deep-news producers. Do what you do best and link to the rest…)”

Comment by Bob Wyman on So what exactly is newspaper web ‘premium’ content? Please tell me by Steve Outing

End of Part 7 – Business Applications and Trends

Coming up next in this Complete Guide to Real-Time News Content Curation:
In Part 8 – Legal Issues and Considerations

Already published:

Part 1 – Real-Time News Curation, Newsmastering and Newsradars – Why We Need It

Part 2 – Real-Time news Curation: Aggregation is Automated, Curation is Manual

Part 3 – Real-Time News Curation – The Complete Guide Part 3: Types And Real-World Examples

Part 4 – Real-Time News Curation – The Complete Guide Part 4: Process, Key Tasks, Workflow

Part 5 – Real-Time News Curation – The Complete Guide Part 5: The Curator Attributes And Skills

Part 6 – Real-Time News Curation – The Complete Guide Part 6: The Tools Universe

Originally written and “curated” by Robin Good with the editorial help of Ludovico Canali and first published on MasterNewMedia on October 20th, 2010 as “Real-Time News Curation – The Complete Guide Part 7: Business Applications And Trends”

Source: Robin Good

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