Curating relevant and pertinent content through twitter lists and perhaps creating your own news papers through sites like paper.li and flipboard can be incredibly effective methods to put you at the top of the list of experts in your field. This however, is about to take another leap forward as technology facilitates further fascinating developments. Curating informative, educational, insightful stuff is going to just get easier and easier. Watch the video below of Robert Scoble interviewing Kareem Amin who talks about his new platform The Shared Web which I think is a particularly exciting development of the way in which we can use the internet. (Still in beta – and only available by invite – I’ll let you know when I get mine! 
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The question is what will The Shared Web do that is different – what is so special about it?
We know that whilst we may love and adore our friends (and admire the best experts in our field), we might not share all our interests with them. They like stuff that we don’t and vice versa. Using The Shared Web wlll mean that when we follow people we can select which of their collected content that we want to see. This means that I can follow the fashion editors and say that I only want to see the items that are relevant to luxury fashion and couture – I don’t need to know about what they had for breakfast (should they be daft enough to post a picture of it!) There is another bonus with this service – it is using algorithms which will intuitively pre-fetch content bringing you new stuff – probably even before you knew that you wanted it. Like My6sense – the more that you use it the better and more accurate it will become and I have to say that I can’t wait.
I agree with Scoble – this could change the way that we use the web massively. Kareem (who is one of a team of friends who have created this platform) says that their aim is the “democratisation of content” enabling all of us to become curators naturally. Through watching our browsing habits, bookmarking content that we like, it creates newspaper like pages collating relevant information filing or tagging it according to subject matter.
What does this mean for you?
Being known, liked and followed is going to be even more at the forefront of any marketing strategy – far more than before. Sharing knowledge is the surest route to demonstrating expertise. Your knowledge and experience of your field is the most valuable asset that you have. It is about people power – friends liking what friends like, experts sharing the most up to date information about their industry. Good digital coaches are going to know how important it is to show their clients how to collate interesting pertinent stuff for their followers. It is about helping them be the very loveable personalities that they are as well as showing how much they know about their industry.
Predictions for the year ahead.
My feeling is that 2011 is definitely going to be a year where being interesting and interested is going to be more valuable than any clever broadcasting or automated techniques. I think that is is safe to say that it will be services like this that will supersede platforms like Delicious. In fact I think that someone should buy delicious for them The question now for any of us marketing our products on the web, is how can we make our information inspiring and attractive enough to be featured on such platforms.
Everything is moving very rapidly to being people-centric and that I think is incredibly exciting. Marketing is definitely about the relationships we build with other people. The more that they like you the more likely they are going to share you with the world. Branding is going to get even more personal than it has already. If you are a plagiarist or if you have masks hiding the real you – you will be found out. Authenticity and originality have to be our primary objectives more than ever before – in fact they are your most valuable assets. If you are creative and inventive then you will almost certainly become the shining stars of the future of the web.