Twitter as a tool for learning

Posted on by — 18 Comments ↓

Social media often gets a bad rap for being a driving force behind people falling out of touch, neglecting in-person relationships, and reducing productivity for people around the world. Naysayers blame it for shorter attention spans and proliferation of bad grammar, and the most vehement of those naysayers believe that social media has led to privacy being a thing of the past. To be fair, there have been many times where I’ve been trolling my Twitter feed only to be thoroughly horrified by TMI moments and tHingz Speld lIKE THIZ. Continue reading →

Students of All Ages Must be Trained to Curate Content

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

“Students of all ages must be trained to search, select, qualify (and therefore disqualify), then enrich with their own thought, and then use and share information.” – Marc Rougier, Co-Founder, Scoop.it

From Daily Edventures:

Educators often see the Internet as a double-edged sword. While the Web provides nearly limitless information on any given topic, that information is often unfiltered, unedited and unfocused. That’s where Marc Rougier and his company, Scoop.it, come in. While their tools were originally created to help marketers and entrepreneurs increase their online visibility, the company quickly discovered that teachers and students found the curation tool invaluable.

“Since the explosion of Web 2.0,” Rougier says, “we live in a world of information overload: everyone has become a producer of information.” This abundance of information, according to Rougier, has generated a double problem: “If everyone can speak, to whom should I listen?” (a problem of qualification of information — extracting the signal from the noise), and “If everyone can speak, how can I get heard?” (a problem of acquiring visibility, reputation, and a voice).

Here, the mission is to get students aware of the importance of information management — to let them really touch, first hand, the challenge of qualification and organization of data – whatever their subject of study. We live in a world of information abundance and (almost) information democracy. Yet, if we are not prepared for it, we can be force-fed by a very small amount of data (a unique video seen a billion times…) and even by false information, and let a vast amount of valuable data be wasted. Students of all ages must be trained to search, select, qualify (and therefore disqualify), then enrich with their own thought, and then use and share information.

See on dailyedventures.com Continue reading →

7 Ways To Make Your Brand Look Terrible On Social Media

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Ally Greer‘s insight:

2012 was quite the year for social media blunders. From American Apparrel offering a 20% coupon to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy deal with their “boredom,” to #McDStories to the worst hijacked hashtags, some brands proved that they need more than a few tips.

It’s time to be frank. Here are 7 ways to make yourself look terrible on social media. (Pro tip: you’re not supposed to do them.)

See on www.businessinsider.com Continue reading →

How Google Author Rank could change content marketing… and journalism

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓


Here’s a little piece of SEO nerdery that affects us all: Google is using Google+ to influence search results in a big way, and brands and media organizations alike have yet to wake up to the…

gdecugis‘s insight:

Erin Griffith analyzes how the use of authorships combined with Google+ is now impacting Google search results.

This change is not new but, as she puts it, it is significant: “Google was always about the algorithm, not curation, certainly not curation through something as, well, human as a social network. The emphasis before was about what was on the page not who wrote it.”

While she focuses on the new importance of authorship given by Google, what’s happening is actually a mix of a couple of things which are in my opinion equally good:

  1. Authorship
  2. Social results

#1 means that an identified, reputable author will prevail; #2 is part of the social signal that Google uses more and more to rank results and that builds on curators’ activity.

Bottom line is that – as I predicted a while ago – the age of low-quality content cheaply produced by random anonymous writers in content farms for pure SEO purposes is over. By combining a measure of the author’s influence as well as taking into account curators’ appetite for a piece of content, Google is bringing quality back in the game. Which is good for authors, curators and… readers.

See on pandodaily.com Continue reading →

Thinking Differently About New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on by — 120 Comments ↓

The New Year’s resolution is such an interesting, inspirational concept. The fact that we’ve institutionalized a specific time of year to be introspective and reflect on how we lived our last 12 months of life is a pretty incredible thing — definitely an institution to respect and make a priority as we ring in 2013. Identifying which things in our lives were good and which things could have been improved should be top-of-mind when the clock strikes its respective 12:00 AM across the globe on January 1st, 2013 and signifies the start of a brand new year. I’ve always felt that a “resolution” may not be the most effective use of the insights we glean from reflecting on our last year. I’ve always felt pressure to do more things, or different things, or change my life trajectory in a significant way with each list of resolutions I’ve written. In 2012, it was “learn a new language,” in 2011 was “read at least 30 books,” and 2010 was “get a job that doesn’t suck.” I’ve always felt compelled to make a firm decision to either do a new thing or break some terrible old habit. Continue reading →

Be Discovered in 2013 via Content Curation and the Interest Graph

Posted on by — 6 Comments ↓

My name is Ally Greer. I’m a marketer with expertise in content marketing and curation. You’ve probably never heard of me.

With over 500 million users on Twitter, 175 million on LinkedIn, and over a billion on Facebook, you probably haven’t heard of most people on the Internet. The bad news is that this also means most of those people probably haven’t heard of you either.

That said, I’m certainly not here to tell you how flooded the Internet is and discourage you from jumping into the information pool. In fact, I’m telling you to do the exact opposite. Although it isn’t likely that all 500 million people on Twitter will be following you by the time you’re finished reading this (or ever), there are a few ways to look what we call “information overload” right in the face and use it to your advantage.

In a digital world characterized by an overwhelming amount of noise, everyone is struggling to find relevant content from people and brands with an expertise on a specific subject. Content curators are the ones who step up to the plate.

According to Michael Brenner, cofounder of Business 2 Community, content curation is the process of identifying relevant content for your audience from multiple sources, modifying or editing that content to reflect the needs of your audience and delivering the content to the appropriate channels of distribution.

The truth is, you’re probably already curating content. Do you share links on Twitter? Do you Retweet content that you find interesting? Do you write blogposts referencing content that’s been created by others? If so, you’re a curator. You know what you’re talking about, you know where the best content on your topic of expertise is, and you put it together for the world to see. But, the question still looms: if no one knows who you are, how will they find it? Continue reading →

7 Reasons to Love the New Scoop.it

Posted on by — 124 Comments ↓

You may have noticed (or maybe not, because they are so awesome to use) that we recently rolled out some big changes to the Scoop.it platform.  Firstly, don’t panic. Secondly. you’re going to love them. We had you (and your success online) in mind while designing them, and we’ve done some intense testing with the new features and the beta testers are just as excited as we are. All the changes make the platform better — allowing you to accelerate and grow your visibility on the web and truly shine.

The changes are all awesome; giving you more control over the look and feel of your topic pages, deeper access to your social networks and more seamless connections between your various social properties. Continue reading →

Scoop.it Unveils Newly Re-Designed Platform to Give Professionals and Business the Visibility They’ll Need to Survive in a Post-Apocalyptic Business Environment

Posted on by — 77 Comments ↓

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE [San Francisco, CA -- December 11, 2012] — Scoop.it, a leading social media and content curation platform for professionals and businesses, recently announced it’s platform redesign, elements of which focus specifically on increasing visibility for its community Continue reading →