Curation will beat distribution

CTAM EuroSummit ’11. The curation of content is needed if audiences are to be able to cut through the noise of social media, according to the futurologist Gerd Leonhard.

In a presentation at the annual cable marketing conference, held this year in Malta, Leonhard said that the current actions of the geeks would be a global standard within five years. “It’s not about a million channels, we have a million channels, and it’s about what you want to watch.”

Leonhard claimed that Twitter was already replacing CNN as a global news source. While the social networking service took just 26 seconds to post information on a news event, the BBC took 41 minutes. “We have a five-year time frame before cable gets overrun by what’s on the internet,” he said. “Assisted serendipity” was needed to ensure customers were able to view content that interested them.

Leonard described the experience of watching the Batman movie The Dark Knight on Facebook as “dreadful”, but said Facebook would ultimately move beyond the eight integrated services slated for imminent announcement, and carry a Netflix service that would in part be funded by the user’s data.

Forecasting a rapid departure from centralised business models, Leonard emphasised that the new business models did not mean you could “simply slap something social” on top, while forgetting about the middle. Data was the new oil, but having data, didn’t mean having advertising.

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