1. Why sharing ideas that matter, matters
We built Scoop.it to make it easy and rewarding to share ideas that matter.
Ideas matter: they make all of us, individuals, businesses and societies, progress. Sharing ideas is equally important as creating them: it honors the creators; it enriches the recipients; and it also benefits the “passers”, who enhance their reputation through propagation of wisdom.
In today’s web, that’s what curators do: they discover, enrich and share content. When they do it well – with passion and expertise and with all due respect to the authors, they make the web a better place and are consequently, quite rightly, rewarded. They, as individuals or as businesses, shine on the web!
So we built Scoop.it to make it easy and rewarding to share ideas that matter. And you, our great community of curators, have embraced the concept at large; you elevated Scoop.it from a clever publishing solution to an active community of savvy people who together make the web a better place. You have indexed, organized, edited and published more than 50 million pieces of content, attracting an audience of nearly 80 million unique visitors. You demonstrated that sharing ideas that matter matters; and is, indeed, rewarding.
2. A humanrithm-powered influence upgrade
But you also challenged us — and we love it 🙂
You wanted to make it even easier to discover relevant content; to organize content in a more meaningful way; to connect with people who share your interests.
So we worked together, with our specialists group on Google+, with our power users, collecting hundreds of suggestions, testing and exchanging ideas. We are really grateful and impressed by your involvement. Together we designed this new major release that enables merit-based organization of web content and helps great curators shine even more on the web.
But how to organize content on a meaningful way? Considering the sheer amount of content at stake, we could not do it manually. We needed algorithms: Scoop.it uses a Big Data semantic algorithm to analyze content, to identify “meaning” within your curation.
But as much as we trust robots to help you find content (Scoop.it’s engine suggests content), we do not trust robots to publish or organize content for you (on Scoop.it, you decide what’s published). We believe in humanrithm — robots working together with humans.
3. Interest channels
The first major feature in this release are the interest channels: that’s categories in which the best topics are organized. Interest channels enable interest-based discovery.
How do we build these channels? By means of the humanrithm: when your curation reaches a certain quality score (based on activity, freshness and engagement) our algorithm invites you to categorize it into an interest channel (the algorithm even suggests possible channels, based on semantic analysis).
These channels enable effective navigation along the interest graph. They help you find relevant content and curators.
And when your topic eventually becomes part of an interest channel, its shining power increases dramatically!
How do we then organize these channels? How do we make sure they make sense? Enter peer recommendation.
4. #Curatethecurators
When one of your topics becomes eligible to join an interest channel, you are rewarded with additional power: The power to recommend other curator’s topics!
Recommending a topic contributes to its quality score. It helps it grow toward an interest channel! And of course, topics in the channels are also sorted by quality score (you’ll see silver and golden badges attached to the best topics). Recommending a topic makes it shine even more!
By being a great curator you earn the power to recommend other topics; and by doing so, you contribute to a merit-based organization of web content.
5. You told us!
Scoop.it is not a place where random users trick scoring algorithms by posting “lol cat pictures” or “twerking videos.” Scoop.it is a place where passionate people, savvy professionals, and serious businesses come to discover, enrich and publish ideas that matter; for their visibility and for their reputation.
Moving toward a merit-based organization was only natural. That was written into our DNA — our core values. And that’s what you told us you needed. 🙂
Discovery of relevant content, connections with people who share your interests and increased visibility based on your merit: all of this benefits the curators, you.
So don’t be shy: use your power, shine; and #curatethecurators!
For the exact details about what’s new with this release, check out our knowledge base article here.
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And when do we get to do that on the go ? with a decent android app that allows tagging for example ? or a CSS that allows us to do it via the web while the app is being written ? Just asking
Hello! There are three apps for Scoop.it on the go: iPad, iPhone and Android. The iPad is a full blown curation + discovery app. Admittedly, the iPhone and Android apps are (still) very basic. Lately, after the release of the iPad app, we have focused our forces on this new release (with lots of interaction with the community so it took time and effort and hopefully you’ll like it :)). But your point is totally valid and is taken. Must Do! Thanks for your feed back.
Hi Marc, the main problem for me – why I don’t share much much more on Scoop.it to my “future” topic (that leveled up to ‘gold’) – is that I have no quick and easy option to do so Post-PC. That’s why I currently focus 90% of my sharing time on other platforms, such as Flipboard. As background: I’m mainly in news discovery mode when using my iPhone apps and in work mode when at my PC (where I don’t like to open Scoop.it while working). – With the current iPhone app I can’t even re-scoop an article that I… Read more »
Hi Christoph – You’re right: Apple offers limited sharing possibilities (and iOS7 was actually disappointing for us on that point as they’re still not on par with Android on this). And you’re right that we don’t support send to email as a sharing mechanism for Scoop.it of course. But like you, I do a lot of content discovery on my iPhone and as a pretty fast workaround, I’ve used the copy/paste function of iOS. Most content apps allow you to “copy link” (or if not open in Safari where you can copy). From there on, it’s pretty fast to open… Read more »
The copy/paste function of iOS is so slow, but I’ll give it a try. I hope you can add send-to-email sharing soon as a feature.
BTW: How can it happen, that I my topic (http://www.scoop.it/t/future) had ‘gold’ status 7 days ago, when I wrote my comment here and mentioned it in the first sentences, quote: “Why I don’t share much much more on Scoop.it to my “future” topic (that leveled up to ‘gold’)”.
And now my status is only ‘silver’ ? Has this been done by algorithms or humans?
The logic here is that Gold status can’t be granted forever: these topics are supposed to be the best of the best and therefore this is not something that can be granted once and for all if we follow that rationale. Several factors are being considered for this: users can stop recommending a topic (we made the feature reversible as you may have noticed), our algorithms also has an input, etc… Having said that, we’re just at the beginning of this and like you and a few others pointed out, we’ve observed that our assessment method on this might not… Read more »
Thanks for giving me these detailed insights, Guillaume. I guess I know what your algorithms noticed. Exactly in the time when you launched the new Scoop.it version with the new silver/gold curator status – I had no time to update my topic for about 8 days. And what made things worse, my last update had a picture that looked ugly and boring in the preview section of the “innovation” topic. Overall I know that I tend to post more boring “dry” stuff, which always gets much lower reactions, as I currently learn on my Flipboard magazine, which I guess has… Read more »
Well this is great! Thanks for the kudos of being “incredibly highly-recommended”. Hopefully it’ll lead to more people discovering us 🙂
Thanks Ian!
That’s exactly the purpose! When you recommend others, you contribute to making the web a better place, by using your human values to complement algorithm-based ranking.
And when you are recommended, your visibility increases and you can be discovered by more people – and not any people, but people who care about the interest you are curating about.
This we hope is to the benefit of great content and great curators; merit-based visibility. That’s why we encourage you to keep curating and be recommended. And to #curatethecurators!
Please, deliver soon a French traduction of scoop.it and simplify the webpage so that the non initiate users of scoop.it can use it easily…
Bonjour Laurence,
Nous serions ravis, vous vous en doutez, de pouvoir maintenir une version française de Scoop.it. Et même dans d’autres langues (nous avons de nombreux utilisateurs hispanophones par exemple). Malheureusement nous sommes encore une jeune startup et devons concentrer nos ressources sur la valeur la plus générale; concernant la langue, sur le web, c’est bien sûr l’anglais. Mais la traduction en français est dans nos plans! Et d’ici là , si vous avez des questions ou problèmes spécifiques, nous pouvons vous assister en ligne, et en français!
Merci pour votre intérêt,
Marc
Hello, je comprends bien que votre budget ne vous permette pas de traduire scoop.it pour l’instant…aussi je vous recommande mettre simplement une boussole au lieu de Find par exemple et de remplacer par des symboles la navigation de scoop.it car je remarque que les non-initiés sont très vite déboussolés et quittent scoopit rapidement alors que moi j’adhère complètement à votre vision. Je fais même maintenant une redirection 301 depuis mon nom de domaine…car je crois en vous Meilleures salutations *Laurence Veya* *Rue de la paix 62 * *2740 Moutier* *Suisse* *Tel. 0041795315288* * * *http://about.me/laurence222* Le 3 octobre 2013 01:10,… Read more »
Nicely done.
Thanks Karl!
Impressive upgrade Marc and thanks for making it easier to find communities of similar interests. Scoopit has proved a very useful tool for us.
Thanks a lot. We value your feed back.
Marc
Guys – love what you’re doing – can we have a membership tier between pro and business [?Pro+] that allows us to brand as an individual curator (ie our own visual id) still with limited topics… the hike between pro and biz is pretty steep…
Totally agree.
Stephen, Marc,
Thanks for the positive words on Scoop.it.
Thanks also for the suggestion. We are constantly reviewing our users needs and we know that one size doesn’t fit all needs. Having an intermediate package with branding is certainly an interesting value proposition. Point taken! Please do not hesitate to continue the discussion if you have any other ideas which would make Scoop.it better for you.
Marc
Good update, nice try
Thanks! And we will keep trying!
Great, nice and easy to use! Bravo!
Thanks much. Our community pushes us forward 🙂
HI Marc,
I plan to get the business package related to Scoop it services
Before that I would like to check various points
1- I plan to have between 5 to 10 topics for a private use (dedicated to internal use – employers)
2- the second part, we would like to have a public Scoop it (from 2 to 5 topics dedicated to our parteners, customers)).
Is it possible to have these two services in the same subscription?
Thanks for your advice.
I like the idea of creating interest channels! It would facilitate searches and it will increase productivity! Great work!
Thanks Alvaro,
We really like your feed back. And because Interest Channels facilitate searches, they also, consequently, increase visibility: it’s really a two way discovery benefit. So it should be valuable for any curator to make it to a channel!
Marc
Just Love Scoop.it Congrats for a job Well Done Developers
Keep Up the Good Work Marti Zuidam scoop.it/switzerland
Thanks for sharing the love Marti.
Yes we are lucky to have awesome team of developers!
Nice topic on more than mountains 🙂
Marc
Being new to Scoop.it I am pleased with the interaction. I use the provided suggestions plus I will post articles written by authors I enjoy from my Linkedin group. I’ve got to say that when I comment that I have Scooped their article (I provide them a link) they get excited to see their post somewhere besides their blog. It is a great way to build authority for them and me.
Thanks much Steve, Building authority, demonstrating though leadership is really what’s at stake. Very glad to read that you see it work; hopefully with the new Interest Channels, we’ll enabling this even more (by facilitating discovery and connection with content and people relevant to your interest). Since I read that you are using the suggestion engine as well: do you know that you can fine-tune it, apply filters, etc, to make suggestions more relevant and increase the signal-to-noise ration? And of course, you also have the bookmarklet to easily capture content outside Scoop.it. Do not hesitate to ask if it’s… Read more »
More feedback.
Please add Zemanta to Scoop.it. I guess you have never heard of Zemanta, but trust me, they could drastically change the experience of tagging to the better. And with more tags lead to even more visitors on Scoop.it.
You can test Zemanta if you have a wordpress blog with their plugin:
http://www.zemanta.com/blog/related-posts-for-bloggers/
And they have a quick and easy to use demo here that just takes 30 seconds to understand the potential:
http://www.zemanta.com/demo/
Zemanta is a semantic analysis engine. They can very quick identify the topics of any content. They are the best in what they do world-wide.
Nice! Thanks for sharing.
Not sure how / where we should add Zemanta to Scoop.it, but very interesting technology / product. I’ll try further!
Marc
I think Scoop is great, but the reason I do not use it as much as I want is the simple fact that I cannot embed my pages in my own website. At least, not that I know about. Above you talk about sharing, curating social, curating the curator, amplifying it. All fantastic, but I want to share it with my own website an share the fruits of my ‘hard work’ with my website and embellish that too at the same time.
I hope it can be done soon. Thanks Robert
I agree with your vision, but it is much more difficult to create synergy at scoop, than I thought. We could become “learning organization” as Peter Senge initiated, but lack of warm hearts and smart minds diminish it.
Finally Scoop.it comes with flat Ui. Well thats great but i found some color complications in “upgrade” button, notification icons , hope you will try other colors for that.. you can try world best flat ui designs
for your inspiration
http://designmain.com/flat-ui-design-websites-inspiration-september-2013/
Yes flat was a necessary move. For it’s today’s web. But also it’s somehow aligned with the values of curation: less is more 😉
Colors are a difficult debate (there are rules and there are tastes). We AB tested several options, but thanks very much for sharing this interesting resource!
Marc
Agree about colours Marc, there are indeed rules. There are rules about text too. Rule Number 1 is that it should be clear and legible. As far as I know there’s no rule about it having to match the company logo (who cares?). The new GUI makes me wince each time I return to Scoop.It from the largely-legible-rest-of-the-world. Not a good user experience mate 🙁
Thanks, wyatte, I was beginning to think I was the only one ‘wincing’. I actually checked all my browsers before realising that it wasn’t a problem with the browser rendering fonts incorrectly but an actual design decision. Really not pleasant. I wince every time I scoop as well. Very iOS7 (not downloading that one till I absolutely have to). I know looks aren’t everything but in a GUI they are important for a good experience. I am all for clean and simple, but it just doesn’t work for me.
You’re right Claire, the app graphics are clear as a bell, while the web site is total rubbish. How about that for a cross-platform service? BTW you’re right to ignore the app. Just tried it and the suggestions list on every one of my topics displays blank, even though I can see the listed items on the web version. Look, I’m convinced Scoop.It! has the potential to become seriously big but someone in there is sending it into a nose dive just when it should be soaring.
I’ve loved Scoopit and I found it really enhanced my blog and attracted Twitter followers. I spent a lot of time happily curating. But if I’ve understood you correctly, what you’re saying here is only those accounts that have attracted a sufficient amount of traffic (and it’s not clear how much) can be expected to be offered the chance to be boosted into the interest channel and get even more views. So it’s basically a way of making the power curve steeper and ultimately shaking loose the long tail people in very niche topics like some of mine. OK, understood,… Read more »
Hello Catherine, Thanks for taking the time to write such a comprehensive comment. And thanks for the nice words 🙂 You address three points: – how does a topic become eligible to a channel – UX choice: drag & drop vs slider – Comparison with Storyful Let me briefly respond to each of them. On the eligibility to reach a channel, you misunderstood me. Sorry if I was not clear. We do NOT want topics to earn additional visibility just based on the fact that they already have visibility. This would actually be contrary to our values: our mission is… Read more »
Good improvements but not enough. I would like to see changes to the pricing. Using your own domain shouldn’t be that expensive. That’s one of the reasons I’ve switched to paper.li. Also again, there has to be an option for some level of automated article posting, at least give us the option to choose. Maybe a separate section which states auto collected scoops? And let us change the format of the display, for example from 2 columns to 3 columns.
Before these changes, especially the pricing for using your own domain, I will have to continue to use paper.li.
Great idea!
Idea born in our community of users 🙂 Thanks for your nice comment!
C’mon chaps,the new font’s gotta be one of the worst ever adopted! The buttons border on the illegible. Scoop.It! can do much, much better than this. We know you can. At the top of this screen it says “smart is the new sexy”. Get smart 😉
i love scoop.it!
Thanks! This gives us lots of energy to forge ahead 🙂
✮✮✮✮✮ Loving all the updates. Lovin’ it.
Many thanks Guillaume!
Hi, Marc. I think Scoop.it make Structuring of Information / Big Data / for the Understanding !
Here, I’ve met and interacted with people I could never have met in any other circumstances and I’ve been the richer for it.
On the app, the My Topics page has counters showing the number of new items, if any, waiting in each topic’s suggestion queue. On the website this fundamental feature is on the Dashboard page but not on the My Topics page. Don’t see why.
Thanks for the feedback. Rationale is we try to avoid overwhelming pages with too much information but this might be more useful than others. Quick question: do you actually miss that on the profile page because you use it more than the dashboard @wyalurch:disqus?
Hi Guillaume. The My Topics page was my default for curating…my topics. Now I’m using Dashboard but only for the My Curated Topics menu. I’d consider un-nesting My Curated Topics to the home page; it’s a (small) drag having to go thru’ the menu each time to change topic when curating. Anyway, these are minor issues compared to the problem of the iOS-friendly fonts that are really awful on the website. Cheers, Jeff
LOVE the new changes! Love the gamification leveling up with the awards (thanks for the 2 golds!)
But I DO miss the black? Can I loan you some? Check out my blog, wiki, electronic portfolio – I have loads! It’s part of my branding! Can we customize that or shall I just get used to it? 😉
Made sure to mention my love of you during the Global #RSCON4 conference last night – see? http://slidesha.re/15E3T3l
Cheers & thanks again!
~Gwyneth Jones
The Daring Librarian (.com)
Thanks for spreading the love @gwynethannejones:disqus ! And great to hear from you. Don’t worry: those of you Stones fan can still paint it black 😉 How? Just go to any of your topic, click Manage and then Customization: you can easily change the Background color to black. The rest of the site won’t be affected but your topics will have your own signature background.
Est-il envisageable d’avoir ici une explication claire (en français si possible) concernant l’attribution des “médailles” sur scoop.it ? Certains topics scoop.it ont des médailles et moins de vues que d’autres pourtant non médaillés… J’avoue ne pas comprendre comment on peut être recommandé.Ca semble tenir du “club d’initiés”
Some of my topics already have more than a thousand views but they are still not on any interests channels. http://www.scoop.it/u/eric-chan-wei-chiang
Some curators with fewer views are already on interest channels. Is it because there were no recommendations by other curators?
How do I get more recommendations? I have received quite a few thanks and have several accepted suggestions, do these count towards getting on interest channels? Are there other criterias such as number of scoops?
This was a year ago, any improvements for me to come back as a customer?
Hi @yustein:disqus: yes, there’s been a lot of new things, including the ability to use templates which one of them is actually multiple columns in responsive designs just as you suggested. They’re available from our Professional plan which is only about $10/month when paid yearly. More details here: http://blog.scoop.it/2014/07/23/introducing-templates-embedded-topics-and-website-integration-through-scoop-it/
They need a Scoop.it account but it just takes a few clicks to sign up with Facebook, Twitter or email and be able to comment. So not longer than any other comment system.