Curator Economy, Not Creator Economy

The creator economy has not done well in courting readers. It "cares" about readers, but only in two dysfunctional ways:

• Turning them into creators ("you, too, can make money doing this")


• Aggressively tracking (and monetizing) their activities

But readers are the largest cohort and the value they provide is the entire value of the scene. There is no v... See more

One way to rethink these platforms is to think about all the users across the 90-0-1 ratio; to figure out how to share a platform's overall value with all its contributors, big and small. In the creator economy, this means rewarding readers and curators alongside creators.

Our digital systems generate noise and there's little the algorithms can do a... See more

In the creator economy, the curatorial role has been replaced by algorithms, and this is a problem for several reasons. The algorithm cannot sense vibes. It doesn't understand culture. It cannot understand how a piece of creative work does or does not fit within a certain milieu. It cannot tell what is worth recommending and what is not without fir... See more

The writer creates, the reader receives, the librarian stores and the curator decides what is worthwhile and why .

The curator (also known as the "critic" in literary circles) decides what is valuable, to whom is it valuable, and why it is valuable. They create and sustain culture . Their role is to build and maintain canons—not "set in stone" canon... See more

Can we fix the creator economy? I think so, and I think the answer may be provided by Timothy Green's salient insight that publication is curation.

Trying to entice lurkers to participate more also completely misses the point: just because anybody can publish doesn't mean they should ; and more subtly, it doesn't mean they should want to. Before social media, it was a completely natural idea that someone could spend their entire life reading books without ever once entertaining the idea that t... See more