The Rise of the Curator Class

Book excerpt: Pairing "big ideas" in marketing with the popular activity of content curation, The Rise of the Curator Class positions curation as a "humanization" movement that is restructuring the internet. Curation is set to overturn the $2.2 trillion global creative industry, revolutionizing how we create, market, and discover content. In the era of content overload and fake news, in which everything to buy, listen to, read, or watch is available online, there is one group of people who have learned to thrive in this climate of superabundance: the curator class, whose influence and power grows as more people look to them as guides. This new curator class is rewriting traditional curation, tackling the overload and making sense of it for others. In the past, curation was available to an elite few. Now, internet platforms such as Pinterest, Spotify, and Twitter empower hundreds of millions of people to curate their ideas for anyone who may be interested, revolutionizing how content is marketed and sold. The Rise of the Curator Class explains how curation is disrupting internet commerce as consumer trust moves farther away from traditional brands and closer to the curators who lead tastes, and it equips readers to think critically about how curation can work for them.