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Archive | January, 2014

Why I hate social media curators

Social Media CuratorsThere is a new category of people I despise most in my social networks:

Curators.

Curators are the people who don’t engage in conversations with people. Instead, they think that all people want from them is an endless stream of links, scheduled to spew out when some algorithm says is the most opportune point in the day.

These people border on the edge of robots.

Can you name a great curator? I can’t. Do you think most people said, “Gee, I want to be a great curator when I grow up.” Those who do probably end up in art museums.

But other than those curators, the rest are just taking social media space.

Here’s the biggest issues I have with curators:

  • Curation has little personality - Link curation makes sense when you have something to add. A viewpoint. An opinion. Something smarter than “Good read” or “Love this!” Otherwise, you seem bland and computerized.
  • You can’t always find something great to share - Look, not everything on the internet is worth reading and sharing. Take this blog for example. Or anything posted on Business Insider. A lot of the stuff posted online these days is just crap to get page views and advertising dollars.
  • People shared curated links at the weirdest times - The internet is 24/7, and not everyone is online at the same time. But do you really think sharing a post at 3 a.m. in the dead of night makes you look better?

Let me be clear: Curation has value. When you can add an informed opinion or a smart viewpoint, curation becomes a great way to start conversations. Link bloggers, like Jon Gruber of Daring Fireball, are the best examples of this.

But not all of us can be bloggers, YouTubers or Instagram selfie stars. That’s OK. Don’t hinge your online existence on sharing crappy links five times daily. Start your own conversations. Join in the conversations of others. But share things when they are worth sharing.

Don’t let your social media presence become a museum of the internet’s crappy link bait. No one wants to see that.