Complex and Overwhelming

Simple and Welcoming

We see certain themes that come through the startup & venture community that define periods of time. These themes are often illuminated by successful pioneers, such as YouTube : user generated content, Facebook : social networking, Zynga : social gaming, Gilt Groupe : flash sales, Groupon : locals deals. I have noticed another theme recently that I believe deserves attention: Curation.
Curation is the act of making the internet less intimidating to end users.

Jetsetter is perfect example of curation and executed brilliantly as well. Booking travel can be particularly overwhelming. If I am looking to to Italy for instance, what cities should I go to? What hotels should I stay in? Where do I even begin researching something like that. We’ll each likely have a different answer to that last question and that’s where Jetsetter comes in. Because Jetsetter has a target audience in mind (affluent, luxury-seeking, but still budget conscious), they can cater to this one crowd. They deliver deal after tempting deal, doing all the work for you. You don’t have to spend a week wading through the bog that is TripAdvisor or, God forbid, dead tree travel guides. Jetsetter says, “We know who you are and why you’re here so we’ve selected a few awesome resorts and hotels around the world.” This model inverts the travel business model everyone else has. Orbitz and their ilk assume you you know when and where you want go. But why? What a silly assumption. Unless we are traveling for business, at some point we make must make a decision on where to travel for pleasure, therefore there must exist a point at which we don’t know where we want to go. At the end of the day, all of the options Orbitz, Hotels.com and TripAdvisor present are way too much work relative to my inherent preference for utter laziness. Very much in alignment with my golden 80/20 rule (20% of features deliver 80% of value), Jetsetter says “The hell with customization, here are your goddam deals and you’ll like ‘em.” It’s a very Apple-esque model (Apple doesn’t have 15 models of phones, they essentially sell one) and I love it. Please do the work for me. That’s why I am paying you anything. Don’t just give me a bunch of search algorithms, please deliver real value. I am a lazy human, not an always-optimizing robot.

Groupon is another terrific example of curation. There are infinite “experiences” you could buy in your community on the internet but Groupon selects one particularly cool experience each day at a bargain price and neatly delivers it into your inbox in an easily digestible form. Because Groupon presents the user with very limited choice, the company is curating ways consumers can get out of their house and have fun. Groupon users may find themselves booking reservations at restaurants they never had previously heard of, skydiving when they never considered it or going on Segway tours when they previously thought Segways were reserved for complete doofuses [Ed: I have a strong inclination to inflect the singular "doofus" as "doofi" even though it would be ungrammatical, but then again maybe it wouldn't be.]

Flipboard is yet another example of curation. The internet is like a vast series of tubes, but Flipboard routes only the tubes you want into your “social magazine.” Only news from the folks you follow on Twitter (and via Twitter lists) and Facebook friends make the cut. Flipboard even provides their own editorialized Twitter lists: FlipTech, FlipArt, etc.

Hunch is another variation on curation in that it blends human and machine curation. Hunch will learn about you via a series of questions and you can contribute your opinions on a vast array of topics and questions. Rather than asking Google, you can ask Hunch. This is a good idea if the decision requires some discretion (ie which wristwatch to buy?).

Even Twitter is increasingly a curation engine. The world is full of news from myriad sources, but I rely on the trusted folks I follow on Twitter to curate the best news for me. Of course, Digg, StumpleUpon and their ilk are also curation engines.

Ok, so there are many examples of curation in the world across startups and the internet. What does all this mean and why is it important? Curation signals a shift in the web. Five or ten years ago, all you needed to do was deliver content–a lot of content–and you could expect users to separate the wheat from the chaff themselves. Think: YouTube. That’s not good enough anymore. We have reached a point of information overload and there is now significant value in boiling the vastness of the interwebs down within specific verticals.

Explicitly consider how curation can benefit your company. Should you deploy editorialized curation for a specific target (Jetsetter) or customizable curation for a broad audience (Flipboard)? I believe there’s also a lot of room for new startups with a curation angle. Take any process that still feels intimidating and overwhelming and consider how you can make it feel warm, fuzzy and easy. Yes, it’s true that by doing this you will necessarily need to cut a ton of features and you will not serve everyone all the time, but I think that is often a key to success.