[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Danny Whatmough, jamescrawford. jamescrawford said: Keep em to yourself RT @DannyWhatmough: Why paper.li and automated curation are doomed to fail http://t.co/iKOaUiU [...]

I’m partly inclined to agree – I find people’s paper.li Tweets annoying, because it’s like broadcasting your own personalised curation. Surely the point of personalised curation is that it is personal, and not likely to be of interest to everyone…

That said, I think there are uses for paper.li, such as internal comms. My colleage @markpack uses paper.li to create an Engine Group daily, which I always take a look at. We’re one agency that’s part of a group of lots of sister agencies that cover all aspects of marketing and communications. The Engine Group paper.li daily collates links that people all across the company have been Tweeting (there are a lot of people, so it’s not always easy to see everything), and as such is a really good way for people to see what the rest of the company is talking about.

paper.li particularly annoying when they get retweeted 6 or 8 times in your timeline by different users. And I’ve had next to no click thrus from them. The #hashtag variations are vulnerable to spam if you can’t block users too.

on interesting start ups, I rather like @formulists

I love paper.li and Twittertim.es before it. Creating a newspaper around content tweeted by your network is incredibly useful. Its personalised media – and paper.li’s use of the print metaphor to generate a daily version is neat.

Likewise creating Twitter networks around a special interest or event – and using paper.li to generate a daily overview of content from networks is useful.

But you’re spot on the auto-tweet feature is bloody annoying. Its a crude attempt to socialise the application and is really no more than social media backscratching.

It fails because my network is personal to me, and therefore so is my version of paper.li. I have never tweeted on anyone’s edition of paper.li but my own.

My view? Use paper.li but turn-off auto-tweets.

[...] Danny Whatmough reckons that automated curation is doomed to fail. He takes issue with paper.li and its use of auto-tweets claiming that its “a lazy way to spew out more content”. I love paper.li and Twittertim.es before it. Creating a media property around content tweeted by your network is incredibly useful. Its personalised media using your network as an editor – and paper.li’s use of the print metaphor to generate a daily version is neat. Likewise creating Twitter networks around a special interest or event – and using paper.li to generate a daily overview of content from networks is useful. But Danny is spot on the auto-tweet feature is bloody annoying. Its a crude attempt to socialise the application and is really no more than social media back-scratching. It fails because my network is personal to me and therefore so is my version of paper.li. I have never clicked on anyone’s edition of paper.li but my own. My view? Use paper.li but turn-off auto-tweets. Posted in Media Tags: Paper.li, personalised media, twitter You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]

As mentioned, I think this an interesting post but misses the value Paper.li brings for the user. I find it very useful to see a daily digest of interesting links from the people I follow. Keeps me up to date and I love the format of rich media and article snippets.

With regards to the auto tweeting: Sure the Tweet is vague but if you know the person who is auto tweeting their paper.li then surely you can judge whether you think the content will be interesting or not? I mean, I would choose to read yours, @jangles or @wadds ‘daily’. But would not bother checking out Ashton Kutcher or Lilly Allen.

In the great scheme of irritating tweets a daily update of content from various people’s group of contacts is a very minor annoyance. In fact, in my view it is not annoying in the slightest. If I want to click on it I do if not, well, the tweet will be buried under a mountain of other useless tweets within the next 2 refreshes so really very little damage is done. The fact that you are giving people an opportunity to share content is a good thing.

With regards to this being automated rather than personalised; perhaps this should stimulate follower culls so that the content that gets put out is stuff from people that you truly value….rather than the latest link from a porn site follower or twitter bot.

don’t like them at all .. rubbish content, irritating in the stream .. i unfollow people who use them

I don’t entirely agree – I think a new generation of far more intelligent content will emerge in coming months and twitter will be merely a tool for the qualification of content rather than the sole source itself.

I definitely agree about the tiresome advertising of someone’s “Daily” now being out. The point of this medium is that the news is personalised and by definition, of less interest to other people.

Right now, manual curation is of more interest to me – tight, qualified, concentrated content. “Curated.by” looks like it could be an interesting player here.

Interesting point and I’m inclined to agree, but, the people commenting here are probably highly invested in curating their own content. Taking into account the small number of people who actually use Twitter to tweet compared to passive consumption, it’s not surprising. The auto-tweet feature, is a touch annoying though…but again, only to the likes of us in this ‘ere echo chamber?

Talking of curation…have you seen http://curated.by a very different approach to curation. I haven’t wrapped my head around it completely, but looks like a great solution to this issue.

I really find value in the tool. It helps me surface content that I might otherwise miss. It helps me reach out to tweeps that I might not @reply that often and I hope this will lead to deeper, more meaningful relationships. On a less positive, but equally helpful tact, it helps me identify off-topic tweeps that have crept into the community via my auto refollow tools, and I can unfollow these directly from the newspaper page. I’ve published my own views on paper.li on my blog http://sherrilynnestarkie.com/2010/09/01/my-paper-li-newspapers/.

@Sam, thanks for mentioning curated.by. Danny, interesting post and i agree with the missing personal insight. Let me know if i can drop you an invite for curated.by. You prob appreciate it.

Thanks for all the comments guys, glad the post has at least created some debate!

A few clarifications. I don’t really have a problem with Paper.li itself. I guess it is more the way people use it. Personally I can’t stand automated tweets, but I guess some of us will just have to agree to disagree here!

There is then a separate point here about automated curation. This is a fascinating subject area for me and I’m sure we’ll hear more and more about it in due course. Ev Williams has some interesting things to say about information overload and Twitter this week too: http://gigaom.com/2010/09/02/ev-williams-twitter-will-actually-help-information-overload/

Finally, I think Sam makes a great point. In our social media bubble, it is easy to forget about the ‘great unwashed’ out there. Technologies like Paper.li are of course in their infancy so much of this is pure speculation, but the debate is thrilling so keep it coming

Yes, I’d be very interested, thanks.

Agreed – thanks for the mention on the blog

I’m a big fan of follower culls, though, as mentioned, I’ve resorted more to using lists (culling vast numbers is actually quite tricky on Twitter) to ensure that some of my favourite followers get more prominence than my general stream, which is good for general overviews, but makes it easy to miss little gems. I guess its all personal preference at the end of the day….

I guess I don’t really have a problem with the tool itself, just the way that some people use it to automatically spew vague content into Twitter streams. I can see the value in curating content you might have missed, but am not convinced that total automation is the way forward. I think we are very much in the early days still…

would you not paperli your curated lists?

[...] I said yesterday in a blog post about Paper.li that information overload was becoming an increasing problem for Twitter users as follower numbers [...]

[...] to the bottomdown Danny Whatmough.com Another blog on digital PR, marketing, tech, social media & stuff read more »follow me on twitter » « Why paper.li and automated curation are doomed to fail [...]

[...] Why paper.li and automated curation are doomed to fail Danny Whatmough takes issue with paper.li’s auto-tweets. Elegant product, bloody annoying feature [...]

just a simple collection of links from any Twitter account: http://bit.ly/76v9t

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[...] Why paper.li and automated curation are doomed to fail [...]