Content Creation vs Curation in a Pinterest Era
Content is created and curated as a function of people’s constant search for social objects. A social object is defined as an experience or item from which conversation yields. In the real world, a social object can be a sports game (“hey, did you catch that score?”) or photos from a vacation (“check out these photos from Hawaii”).
Online, social objects come in the form of status updates, articles, photos and videos which come to reflect the views of the person consuming the content. Once the content is consumed, it enters into the social sphere.
The online social sphere is a reflection of self actualization and its corresponding self expression. People use services like news portals, StumbleUpon and Twitter to discover content which they may or may not like.
People actualize the content they see on these services and choose the ones that best reflect the image that they want to create of themselves online. Services like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr are an expression of how people want the world to see them. Each of these expression communities see the splintering of social behavior.
While over the past two to three years, we turned to “one size fits all” platforms like Facebook and Twitter to create our online persona, new services like Pinterest and Instagram are gaining in popularity to reflect communities where photos are more valued.
To discover the content to “create” within these channels, it is imperative for people to discover the content that best reflects them. People want to express themselves. Pinterest enables them a new, visual route to create that reflection.
