Curate and/or Content

Curate and/or Content
One of the items I picked up recently, the stated purposes for various web site drivers: content or curate?

Supposedly, it’s an “either/or proposition,” as in, either a site is known for curation, curating links, perhaps as a portal, usually with commentary. The other purpose is straight up content. Oddly enough, dig into the web’s (short) history, and blogs were originally short commentary and links. “Curate,” would be the correct term.

One one level, the side project is, strictly speaking, curation. It’s just images, one a day. However, that’s much less curation, in my mind, and more just content. (Note: on the side project, it’s not always good content. It is daily.)

The side project is an artistic muscle that requires a daily workout, hence the daily image at weird hours, and most frequently, with no commentary. I have no idea where it stands now, but at one point, anything shared on Flicker or Instagram was free for the taking, as in, an ad agency could legally pull the image out and stick that artwork in advertising, with no need to be concerned with copyright. That’s one reason I built my own site. It also coerces me into thinking about images on daily walks around San Antonio.

Any writer who doesn’t walk misses the best images, and more important, human interaction. I learned that from an American novelist, John Updike.

The site is on its unknown iteration (4th server 5th server). Still, I post an image a day, there, with the subtitle, “Alamo City: 500 pixels at a time.” It used to read, “Digital Still Life in Alamo City.”

By strictest definition, then, the site is digital content. The “curate” part is just by accident. It’s less curation and more just a front end for my picture database.

With my horoscopes, the weekly column is clearly content, topical and time-sensitive, but merely content by any definition. I owe fealty and gracious alliance to a now-defunct magazine that introduced me to the idea of hot links, which, prior to that, were nothing more than sausage from South Side BBQ in Elgin, TX (just east of Austin).

With my links, I am reminded that there was an article, an image, a web posting that meant something. That’s the curation aspect. Sometimes, it means something important. Other times? Not so much — could just be some news item that fascinated me.

So are the horoscopes content or curation, and likewise, with the side project, content or curation?

cf., Leo…