why curation is important

I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have ... See more

It’s clear that curating content within a particular niche can be an incredible way to build an audience and add value. Content curation hooks people in with the promise of learning new skills while saving time, and it keeps them coming back by building a sense of community around a particular subject or vertical.

We need leaders in all aspects of our lives, and human curators should be the arbiters of taste. You may already be sick of trending templates, memes, specific types of click-baity content, soulless imagery, vapid videos, engagement farming, annoying trending songs.9 It’s not going to stop. In fact, it’s going to get much worse. The problem is that... See more

what I’m really mourning here is the death of independent media: opinions that aren’t created as clickbait, hot takes that aren’t manufactured for views, and recommendations that aren’t paid for—ultimately I’m looking for people I can trust.

When I’m traveling, I like to bring back one thing where I say, This could only exist here . As unattainable as it may seem, I want to have things in my life where I say, ‘I can’t link to this. I came upon it by chance, it’s imperfect, it has a soul, and probably no one else has it.’”

Blackbird Spyplane: The unlinked thing with a soul. It can feel

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I’ve been thinking about the enduring, perhaps increasing currency of personal recommendations (practically artisanal craft now if you think about it!) as well as the value of connoisseurship and curation in a culture where unthinking automation has left us feeling drowned in a deluge of content.

I suspect that’s the core appeal of all the influenc... See more

Second, I’m reflecting on a point former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale famously made in 1995: “There are only two ways to make money in business: bundling and unbundling.” I think we’re burnt out by the fragmentation that the D2C era brought to everything. After subscribing to tons of hyper-niche content over the years, the idea of a couple brands we ... See more

Relying on creatives or niche experts (e.g., wine or book editors) is not a novel concept, though I do think we’re leaning on them more heavily as an antidote to algorithmic recommendations, and I know they’re working harder to produce differentiated suggestions.

In fact, I’d argue an emerging class of creators and consumer brands is actually employing curation as a business strategy. Gohar World, Ganni and Soeur have been sharing city travel guides, Ghia has been sharing Spotify playlists, and tastemakers like Olympia Gayot and Alex Eagle are joining entirely new social platforms purpose-built for discover... See more