Infotention

Via Robin Good

I learned a great deal about infotention from Robin Good, who foresaw what he called "newsmastering" as a key skill years before it was called "curation." -- Howard

 

 

Robin Good: Among the five digital trends presently shaping the consumer experience economy, according to Macala Wright who first wrote about this on Mashable, there is one that has as its key objective the reduction of "information noise", distractions and approaches to digital communication that make it harder to grasp and understand a message or to complete a key task one is after.

 

It reads like there is more to information curation than people scanning feeds and selecting relevant items to write about.

 

From the original article I have extracted a few passages: "Calm technology refers to applications that cut down on the digital noise of high-volume data to show the user only enough information that he or she needs to complete a task.

 

...It refers to technologies that do not disrupt our workflow.

 

The whole idea is to reduce distractions to our work flow without losing functionality.

 

Calm technology fights against many of the principles of digital marketing: instead of screaming for attention with flashing banner ads, technologies and applications politely take a backseat to the user’s primary focus...

 

...

 

Examples of calm technology can be found in the growing popularity of social curation and discovery.

 

Social product discovery sites such as Lyst, Mulu.Me, Buyosphere, Svpply and Discoveredd are essentially social filters that enable their communities to curate the products that are most relevant to them.

 

Moreover, the rise of interest networks and the idea of following someone who has similar likes and shared interest topics are examples of the principles of calm technology driving user behavior.

 

Google Circles, Pinterest and Chime.In, even location apps such as Sonar, Glancee and Highlight, can all be classified under the “term interest network.”

 

Excellent reading. 8/10

 

Full article: http://fashionablymarketing.me/2012/06/digital-trends-consumer-experience-economy/ ;

Via Robin Good

Robin Good: In January of 2009 the McKinsey Quarterly published a video interview and a full article entitled "Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers" in which Google’s chief economist told executives in wired organizations how much they needed a sharper understanding of how technology empowers innovation.

 

In the video, Hal Varian says something that if you are trying to understand the emerging curation trend, is as relevant (if not more) today as three years ago when it was first published:

 

"The ability to take data - to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it's going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids.

 

Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data.

 

So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.

 

I think statisticians are part of it, but it's just a part.

You also want to be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively.

 

But I do think those skills - of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis - are going to be extremely important..."

 

Video interview: http://bit.ly/googlehalvarianoncuration 

(go to the section "Workers and managers")

 

You will need to register to read the full original article: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286 

Via Robin Good