Curated.by is doing something interesting.

Previously in beta test, the site could be used to curate tweets into bundles.

The site was useful but very niche. What’s more I couldn’t see how in its current format it could aquire enough users to create a successful business model.

However, the site’s latest development sounds much more useful. What’s more I can see how they could drive revenue from it.

Here’s the update they sent out today:

Welcome to the new curated.by!

Make sure you head over to www.curated.by today and check out what’s new!

Login to your account here: http://www.curated.by/login
Curated.by was developed as a tool that allowed you to curate the best tweets into topic based streams. Today we’re turning it into a place, that let’s you follow the topics you are interested in and create and share your own topics with everyone else.

As part of this process, we are moving away from being a pure Twitter curation tool and instead of just allowing you to curate tweets, you will be able to curate any information into your bundles from tomorrow on

Interesting don’t you think?

It seems only yesterday since I was writing about news curation tools….

In fact it was yesterday when I wrote this post, but thanks to a helpful comment on the blog I have now found Newscred, a curation tool which allows users to build fairly bespoke news pages to read and share with the world.

My Newscred page is available here. The content selected can be tailored towards geographical areas and while the search parameters are a little strange, it would be picky to say that this isn’t a great new addition to the curation repertoire.

Newser has recently come to my attention and is a news curation tool – or in other words, a user generated or edited take on what’s happening in the world.

I have been banging on about curation to my colleagues and anyone who would care to listen for a long time and some people agree with me that curation is the future, while others doubt why it’s so important.

For me, with so much content out there on the internet, curation sites and to a lesser extent aggregators are a great way to get a different take on things.

From a PR perspective, curation offers real opportunities. For example, brands should be curating content too, to show that they are experts in a given field, or aligning themselves to a given specialism, topic, person or campaign.

As I have said before, my favourite curation tool is The Twitter Times because it pulls together content based on your Twitter feed – a real time newspaper. As it is aggregated from your Twitter feed there isn’t a feeling of the content being biased towards sources from the USA.

Alltop.com is great because the user can edit the content and have more control by creating their own page. Popurls also remains a great place to start the day and find out what is happening in the world, while the Daily Perfect brings your Facebook friends into play too, curating what they are interested in.

What is really disappointing is that there is no British curation tool. All the curation tools I have just talked about are American so have a biase in some way to US sources. Whoever launches a British aggregator, will make a lot of money.

American (broadcast) media is often cricisised in the UK for its low quality analysis, but when it comes to digital news, the Americans have a far more sophisticated choice of content. Please can some clever website developed create a British aggregator to rival these others!

So, back to Newser, my latest favourite place to find news. Yes, it is American, yes some of the content is low on quality, but every now and then the site pulls up a real gem of a story to keep you hooked.

To close this post, here are some video clips to give you more insight. The clip here is an interview with Michal Wolf, creator of Newser. For some reason the clip won’t embed in this post. Michael is a little bit OTT (Over The Top) when he talks about the end of journalism as we know it, but he does raise some interesting points.

Curation of the news is one of the most exciting innovations on the internet.  The internet is an enlightening place to keep up to date with current affairs and news, but now with news curation sites we can access, sort, consume and share thousands of news sources from around the world.

Fernando Rizo, a digital PR chap at Ketchum who I’ve met and respect, says he thinks that Google Reader is everything he could ever need.  See his post:

http://fernandorizo.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/google-reader-is-all-the-social-network-that-i-need.html  

However, I think I need my news in a more consumable format, so here are my three favourite ways to consume news (in no particular order):

-          www.popurls.com

The site recommends top content from all the main international sites, networks and blogs and aggregates it for you.  OK, so the content is far too US centric, but I find the layout excellent and the content engaging.  I’m also fascinated by the US, so the nature of the content doesn’t bother me.  It also presents images and video in a simple and visual way.

-          http://my.alltop.com/jameswdcrawford

Alltop.com is tremendous and above is a link to my Alltop list.  The great thing about Alltop is the user can choose the news sites and blogs from which they want updates.  The site also makes sharing incredibly easy.  One criticism is that if a user only turned to their alltop.com profile for news then they might never find out what is happening on, say Fox News, or another media channel, which they wouldn’t normally give a second glance.  

-          http://www.twittertim.es/jamescrawford

Twitter Times is a bit clunky still, but I love the way it curates news from my Twitter Network and provides it in an engaging way.  I can also see uses for this for my clients, say for example internal communications (for example a way for an MD to keep his staff up to speed on industry topics).  I also think Twitter Times is an intriguing insight into a person and their network.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has any better sites, or other curation tools which they think are more useful, or just different.