The Louvre, The Internet, and Content Curation

“I’d need a week to see everything,” says nearly every acquaintance of mine that has experienced the Louvre in Paris, France.

With over 35,000 objects displayed over the space of 652,300 square feet, the Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world.  The palace housing the museum features long, marbled hallways with miles and miles of art pieces and historical artifacts on display. Taking a week to see it all? That’s cute. A closer estimation is nine months. Nine months to glance at every piece of art here.

Marveled at for its sheer volume of objects, the Louvre remains massively popular. Though the experience might leave tourists feeling overwhelmed, the magnificence of human ingenuity on display makes for a remarkable visit every time.

Organized by sections based on period or movement, visitors can hone in on an area of interest at the Louvre. Scattered, this place is not. It just takes a bit of walking to get from space to space.

If the organization of creative chaos is possible in the Louvre, then we can expect to find similar solutions for the information overload that is our current web landscape.

Enter content curation.

Curation has become an over-used term recently, as Net Magazine contributor Katie Moffat notes, with musicians “curating” festivals, chefs “curating” dinners, and Pinterest making “curators” out of fashion followers and women with weddings to plan.

However, it defines an important part of what Mashable writer Steven Rosenbaum calls the “content equation.” He points to editorial curation as “human filtering and organizing,” necessitated by “the vast number of people who are now making and sharing media.”

Like the Louvre, the Internet is stuffed full of great things. Curation allows for the thoughtful organization and presentation of things, directed at a specific audience. Just as the Louvre has halls and rooms housing art that has been catalogued by historical period or artistic movement, web curation tools showcase archived content in new formats.

Content curation tools like Pinterest are surging in popularity as the hype around “curating” entitles its users as possessors of great taste.

For now, get acquainted with content curation and what the popular online tools can do for you business branding strategies. The topic is vast, like the endless halls of the Louvre, but the resources online make content curation a dynamic, approachable objective in business branding.

References
1. Moffat, Katie. “Social media at SXSW: the top five talking points.” 21 March 2012. Net Magazine: http://www.creativebloq.com/netmag/social-media-sxswi-top-five-talking-points-3126393
2. Rosenbaum, Steve. “ Why Content Creation Is Here to Stay.” 3 May 2010. Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2010/05/03/content-curation-creation/