The first time I was mentioned in a Paper.Li I didn’t understand what had happened. It showed up in my Mentions stream on Twitter that I and a few others had made “The ____ Daily” and were part of the “Top Stories.” I thought the person who had mentioned me had read something of mine and liked it enough to tweet about it. I promptly thanked him for the tweet, but little did I understand that the gentleman in question most likely had no idea who I was or what I had written. I had been picked up by the automated service Paper.Li.
For those who are not familiar with Paper.Li, it is a content “curation” (and I use that term loosely) system that publishes multiple Twitter and Facebook feeds and makes a newspaper of sorts. You are able to determine the topics that make your digital newspaper by specifying certain terms. There is a very slight aspect of curation, as you can specify one of your columns be from a certain Tweep. For instance, you could set from:mashable as a parameter. However, this is not just tweeting Mashable’s latest blog post, this is reproducing a selection from every tweet in Mashable’s tweet stream with a computer determining which tweets are worth republishing.
This excerpt from a recent Paper.Li press release explains how the people of Paper.Li view what they do:
“Curation is the next iteration of information on the web, and I believe Paper.li has the momentum, passionate publisher base and advanced technology to deliver on the promise of curation and hand-picked content,” said Eric Hippeau. “In a world awash with information, well-curated content is increasingly important and I’m excited to advance the industry through working with the Paper.li team. Paper.li opens up a whole new way for people to consume information and engage in news that matters.”
Over 12 million articles are curated daily by Paper.li publishers, creating highly personalized and contextually relevant content collections. The company’s enhanced search now provides the Paper.li community easy access to this filtered information, for an unprecedented content discovery experience.
Content Curation or Aggregation?
The problem with this viewpoint is how one views curation. Curation, to me, means that a value judgment has been made about the quality of the content. Even Triberr (which I recently joined) may not curate individual posts when in Automagic mode, but it does curate the source of the posts and that is a form of curation in itself. Paper.Li has no such human value judgment attached to it. Posting to your Paper.Li whatever happens to be in the #smalllbusiness hashtag stream when the Paper.Li runs is not curation, it’s topical aggregation.
Is Paper.Li Too Spammy?
Paper.Li also dances in the grey sands of spam with its automatic @mentions of those that are listed in a Daily. To quote Venkat Balasubramani of Spam Notes, who is no fan of Paper.Li:
The sole currency of paper.li is people retweeting dailies because they are mentioned. (The bulk of traffic to paper.li dailies are from people who check to see whether their tweets are mentioned in the dailies.)
This is essentially the Paper.Li model: retweets generated through automated mentions. There is no substantive reason for the mentions, and thus the retweets are even more empty, as they are forwarding something which had no real content value to begin with.
I should mention that spammy is not the same as spam. A few bloggers I have tremendous respect for use Paper.Li, and obviously, they are using it as a marketing tool for their blogs. I would be very curious to know if it has produced results?
I think the best analogy I can think of for Paper.Li (particularly when set to daily) is that it is similar to the friend we’ve all had who, back in the early days of email, forwarded every joke that hit his inbox. It didn’t matter if it was funny or if it had been around the web 500 times, he forwarded everything. You wouldn’t define that as spam, per se, just an activity which produced no value and wasted valuable time.
So, does Paper.Li add any value to our collective digital lives? At this point, I think the answer has to be no. In a world where we are, to quote Paper.Li, “awash in information,” the greatest content challenge we all face is sifting through the rushing waters of information to find the little specks of gold. Paper.Li is but another tributary feeding the rapids of information, adding repetitive and randomly selected content to a world that already has too much of both.
Paper.Li might have potential in the future. Heavy hitters such as Guy Kawsaki and Eric Hippeau are on board, so hopefully Paper.Li will have the resources and innovation needed to take its product to the next level. If computerized filtration can learn to be more intelligent and truly come closer to human curation, it might begin to bring useful content in a valuable form. Until that happens, most of what Paper.Li purports to do can be achieved much better and cleaner through RSS and Twitter lists.
So… Is Paper.Li more spammy than useful? If you use Paper.Li, has it produced traffic to your blog? Have you ever read someone else’s Paper.Li — for its content and not just to find your own stuff?
Twitter: bdorman264
Whew, I’m glad you said in your opinion it currently provides no value to our current digital lives. I’ll trust you because I know you are smart like that………..
I’ve heard it mentioned in columns but have not been curious enough to check it out. If you said it was the next big thing, then I might have had to take a look. I’m just excited I have my main RSS feeds in Google Reader now; that was a huge step up for me.
Thanks for sharing, sounds like you researched it pretty well.
Hope you have a great weekend; getting any of this rain? We’ve had 3 nights in a row………..finally………
With the Paper.Li, I was mentioned in a few and started digging in to see what was happening. The more I learned about it the less I thought of it. I think the idea has potential; it just seems like the current execution is adding more noise, which is what we all need, right?
I think my second blog post ever was about RSS for small business owners. I use Netvibes instead of Google Reader but whatever the reader, I still love RSS! I have no idea how you were keeping up with your commenting schedule prior to using it.
Yeah, we got the rain too. The dog freaks out with thunderstorms, so that’s a party, but we definitely needed it.
Thanks for stopping by Bill. Have a great weekend!
Twitter: executiveoasis
Adam, I think you have misunderstood Paper.li. If you show up in someone’s Paper.li it is because they have configured their paper to include:
- you as a user because they like your content
- a topic or topics on which you focus
- keywords or hashtags that you use to indicate your topics.
I would think that it would be a compliment if someone choose to include you.
I am hosting an #eventprofs chat tomorrow evening Tuesday, July 10 – 9 PM EDT. Pro or con Automated Tweets and Social Media Sharing you are welcome to join in.
In the mean time, I say to all Paper.li haters, if you don’t want to be mentionned in Paper.li just use stop paper.li mentions:
http://paper.li/stop-mentions.html
You will be removed at the next update. To Paper.li lovers I say “pick me, pick me”, I would consider it to be a compliment if you included me
dear Adam,
Thanks for your thought provoking blog post. I can imagine that you are taking that stand but I really wonder if you have setup an account and experience the quality of the service to its full extent.
Personally I feel different abot Paper.li and found they do a tremendous good job in sifting out the
quality articles.
Actually I have 3 dailies and I must say that the selection of the tweeps that I follow corresponds to
their knowledge productive contribution for my knowledge base.
For http://paper.li/digitalecurator I identified 2000 key tweeps. Twice a day Paper.li provides me an excellent overview of the documented result. Ofcourse it is a very different paradigm, giving up the
editorial role and focussing on the selection of the tweeps that are beneficial for you. I agree that is
another mindset but to me it is a proven practice.
I ve also tried it in another setting. When th Arab Revolution started in Egypt I arranged a list with the
main tweeps that were reporting about the developments. By snowballing their connections i ended up
with quite a reliable set of reporters right from the spot. Until this day I receive that Daily selection.
Just imagine the effort it takes to produce that unautomated. It gives me a good overview of the
current state and the main developments of the day. It is the social network that does the curation and they do a great job. Don’t overlook that only the tweets with a link to content is included. I am very pleased how
they sort out the crap and deliver this great servce to me.
Below are the various Dailies that I produce. Just today I did the setup for a Daily on Content Curation.
I like to challenge you to subscribe to that one and check the output for some time. I trust that you come to a different conclusion as you did so far.
kind regards,
Gerrit Visser
http://paper.li/gervis
http://paper.li/gervis/arab-revolution
http://paper.li/digitalecurator/1308390628 (setup today)
Hi Gerrit,
Thanks so much for dropping by and leaving such a well thought out comment. I really appreciate you taking the time. To your points…
* I haven’t felt any inclination to setup an account because I have experienced the product without having to do so. I have viewed Paper.Li papers by a number of bloggers whom I respect (and random others) and didn’t find that the papers provided any value that I wasn’t getting elsewhere. In fact, it presented so much additional content it was really a negative to me.
* I can certainly understand using Paper.Li to filter content for your own use, and I can see how it would be useful in that way. However, for the way I operate, I really don’t see that it does any better job than the combination of RSS and Hootsuite (using Twitter lists, hashtags, search terms, etc.) As for curating for others, that is where I question the value.
* The one thing that you did not address is the automatic mentions and that is one of the biggest issues I have with it. It really is a bit “spammy,” and I still don’t see it as a positive.
Gerritt, you may notice that the title of my post had a question mark in it. And even though I do end up coming down on the negative side with the current incarnation of Paper.Li; I hope you can tell by the tone and content of the post that this was not a bash Paper.Li piece. My point being — I am still willing to have an open mind about it. So, I am going to take you up on your offer and subscribe to your ecurator paper for a few weeks. Let’s see what happens.
Thanks again for stopping by and taking the time to share your thoughts!
hi Adam,
Thanks for taking the time to answer. I did notice the question mark in the title. Personally I would say that the daily announcements of the many Dailies that people distribute can be experienced as spam. And maybe that is not a proper way to promote the output. I agree with you that Paper.Li is an excellent filter to keep track with the tweets of the people you follow. Still I do think though that its value can be more once the sources that are followed are selected carefully. The more effort one puts in social curating the better the Daily will be. For many people that will be an eye opener and a different way to approach the question who you are going to follow. It forces you to answer the question who are
the most knowledge productive for you. I wrote yesterday that I am setting up a Daily on the theme Content Creator. In the first stage I identified likely tweeps in that field. By evaluating the output on a daily basis I will learn how precise that group is put together. That may mean that 50% of the tweeps followed via that list will prove to be to broad in their coverage. In the same time I keep searching for other tweeps who pay considerable attention to Content Curation. By refinig that list daily after some time the output will have less noise and be more and more on focussed. That is a learning process which will prove to be worth the effort. I hope with my response to share with others that social search and a constant evaluation of the people you follow will create a very dynamic and rich news stream. It’s not the tool that determines how well the output is but the skilled identification of the most valuable tweeps to follow.
greetings,
Gerrit
Hi Gerrit,
I understand where you are coming from. I guess the big question becomes how useful your Paper.Li is to others once you have refined the curation. Every Paper.Li I’ve seen just seems like it adds more noise, and I wonder how many actual readers (not subscribers) non-celebrity papers have?
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
Hi Adam,
thnx so much for mentioning triberr
I was thinking about paper.li the other day. It occurred to me that if we had this technology back in 1995, it would be mind blowing. It would have put CNNs, and MSNBCs out of business. Even in 2000, we would all kill to have paper.li…
So, we know paper.li would have been cool 10 years ago, but is it cool now? And I’d say yes, it is. For about first 3 minutes. And then, you never think about paper.li again.
It’s the kind of technology that leaves you flat and lukewarm like a glass of pepsi you left outside on a warm summer day and you forgot all about it
Hey Dino! Nice to see you. Heh. Love the Pepsi analogy!
You’re right the technology would have been amazing years ago, and it is still pretty impressive now. I think Paper.Li falls into a gap where the technology is cool but not sophisticated enough to make it provide value that stands out from what is already widely available.
If Paper.Li can ever get some Skynet-like self-awareness and truly curate content in a more meaningful way, I will probably become a big supporter. Just filtering out tweets that don’t have links is not enough.
Thanks for stopping by!
Nice post, Adam.
I’m with you – I think Paper.li is lazy and tired. It amazes me how many people have jumped on the Paper.li bandwagon. Like all social media tools, one has to ask, “does this add value to my followers”? I think the answer is a resounding no with Paper.li.
Perhaps some people to do read the content in there, but I’m with you, I think most people who click on it are the ones that are mentioned. Now, if Paper.li allowed users to curate the content MANUALLY and then share that with their community, it would be a completely different story. I think you would see a lot more interest and people would be more excited when their articles or tweets were mentioned. Right now, it means virtually nothing.
Laura… “Does this add value to my followers?” That’s exactly on point! As I mentioned to Gerrit, I would really love to know how many people actually “read” papers created by others. One of the flaws in the model is that most people prefer curate their own content in their own ways. If the 10 bloggers I follow most all had papers (some actually do), I doubt I would read any of them. I get plenty of their ideas from their blogs and tweets.
And I completely agree, if you are mentioned in a paper, it is fairly meaningless.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your views!
dear Laura,
The destillated news is as good as the list of followers. Just like one searches in a database of Lexis Nexis where you decide what sources you want to be included so is the challenge to create a narrow focussed set of followers. That is a different use of Twitter than we generally are used to. Virtually I think that the curated effort is translated into added value of the daily output. The selection of the people you follow is in your hands. And that dedicated effort determines how good or bad the output will be.
Gerrit
Adam, thank you. I’ve seen more of these pop up since I let go of mine months ago, and I’ve been wondering if there has been anything new or beneficial that’s drawing more users, so I’m glad to read your up-to-date verdict on it.
Here’s the link to my adventure with it, in case you or any readers are interested in a first-person experience earlier this year: http://deliberateink.com/paper-li-a-clearer-view/
Hi Shakirah,
Thanks for the comment and the link! It was interesting to read your first hand account of your experience with Paper.Li. I hope others will share their experiences also.
Hey Adam, I use Paper.li and thought of it as spammy, until I learned to edit it better and turned off the automation.
Now it doesn’t tweet automatically, but I do it from time to time. Of course, I do forget to do it for weeks sometimes, lol.
Hey Brankica, When I mentioned people whose blogging I respect that use Paper.Li — you would fall in that category, so I appreciate you sharing how you are using it. Going “manual” does seem to help with the spammy part (assuming bloggers use it correctly after that), so I guess that leaves two functions: personal aggregation and aggregation for others/promotion. I would be curious to see how you still feel about it in a few months. Hopefully, Paper.li will keep innovating its product and make it more useful.
The more I think about it, I think the automentions are probably a net negative for the company. Sure, many people might not have heard about Paper.Li without them, but on the other hand, more people would have a positive first impression of Paper.li.
I appreciate you stopping by!
Heh…. think I’m with Dino on this: at first it seemed like an interesting idea, now not so much. The reason: not everyone uses it like Brankica and that’s the problem. I too follow some good bloggers who use the service and at times, I’ve seen some decent aggregations of posts. More often than not however, everyone has set it and forgotten about it while letting it automatically send one junky link after another. The point of tools like this is to make it easier to share and I’d do so for what I’ve been READING but not everyone has that approach; it’s just recycled noise, blind RTs of lackluster posts and lately… I’ve been spammed with auto-posts saying that I am mentioned but I’m no where in the paper.
IDK Adam I think any really well curated list might need to be more limited, but then I know bloggers who publish great recap lists on a weekly basis. The trick is they take the TIME, do it manually and with thought and consideration as to why they are selecting the articles they want; actual curation vs. automated, spammy recycling. FWIW.
Hey Davina, I agree; rare is the person who will take the time that Brankica does to truly refine the output. You also make a great point about the roundups!
Good roundup posts provide a level of curation and value that, at this time, Paper.li cannot come close to. There are a lot of great roundups that I read, but two that I read almost without fail each week are Ingrid’s SuperPost Sunday http://nittygriddy.com/2011/06/20/superpost-sunday-my-top-may-stalker/ and Kristi Hines’ Fetching Friday http://kikolani.com/fetching-friday-resources-mashup-herding-cats.html. I might not comment on them that often (need to do better at that!), but those are the two I rely on to catch good content I might have missed the week before. Both of those roundups provide incredible curation, and both make it easy to see if a post will interest you
Glad you enjoy the Friday roundups! I appreciate knowing you’re a reader regardless of whether you comment!
Ingrid’s is a great one to catch up with as well – she always finds things I miss!
Thanks Kristi! You really do a great job with the series. I appreciate the work that must go into it.
Thanks so much Kristi – I really appreciate that. And coming from you – it means a lot
. Needless to say that your Fetching Friday’s are all that and then some!
Hey Adam,
Really flattered by what you said – thank you! I also appreciate the kind words and I’m thrilled that my SuperPost Sunday’s come in handy for you
. Although they do take some time to roundup and write out – they’re definitely worth it!
Have a great evening.
Cheers
Hey Ingrid,
The SuperPost Sunday’s are always excellent, and they really do represent an example of superb content curation that provides value to others! I know they are much appreciated by your community.
Thanks for stopping in. Have a great evening as well!
I read those too, even have a list post of my own… just accumulating many of the other great lists out there; lots of people do some nice recaps, Ingrid and Kristi for sure.
Hi Adam,
Paper.li has to be used correctly in order for it to add value to the readers. It can help to increase your authority on a given subject and they have some value in terms of SEO, as well. I worked with Brankica to help refine the system she uses to create her Paper.li and I’m more than happy to help anyone else who is willing to go the extra mile.
Thanks and I look forward to more discussions on the topic.
btw – nice to see you using GASP here on the blog. I’m a big fan of it and any plugin that Andy Bailey develops.
Cheers!
Thanks for adding your voice Ileane. I’m glad to see Paper.li is working for you. Looks like you’ve got it down to a science. Very nice of you to offer your assistance to all. Maybe if people like you and Bran really make it work long term, it will create some converts.
I appreciate the comments! (on GASP too…) thx
hi Adam,
To contribute to a proper analysis of the quality of the Paper.li output I would like to give here the urls of two
Paper.li’s in the same context produced on the topic Content Curation on the same day.
Please compare:
http://paper.li/robinyearsley/1307271485
with
Compare http://paper.li/digitalecurator/1308390628
Obviously the first Daily is more focussed. The second gives the topic in a broader context.
It shows that the better people curator here is Robin Yearsley.
I will keep refining the second until the output is satisfactaroy.
Notice that the second Daily only exists 2 days and is still in the proess of getting the proper resources.
This comparison proves that it’s not the tool that determines wether Paper.li is spammy but the
skillfulnss of the curator makes the output.
I hope readers pick up this point that the body of followers to a twitter account is what you can influence
to get a proper news review. This is quite a challenge and personally I believe that social curating is
only at the beginning.
greetings,
Gerrit
Gerrit, Thanks so much for the comparatives and for the additional information. I really appreciate the time you have put into this discussion.
I think refining any curation is important. The automatic mentions is the part that I and the other commenters find spammy — they are just random (no matter how well curated) when you are on the receiving end. Manual mode seems to cure this.
Thanks again for the insights!
Interesting post Adam. I never think of Paper.li as spammy. While curation as filtration has its place, I feel a bit cheated by the folks I know how send it out – they are smart, connected thought leaders, and I miss having them add their commentary along with their Paper.li. Even one line or comment, impression or observation would enhance the value of their Paper.li imho
I appreciate Gerrit’s side by side examples- very informative, as one appears to be more on topic than the other.
With the volume of content created reaching over 1.5 billion pieces daily, curation tools are more and more necessary. i believe its the best of the technology, combined with human smarts that delivers the real value in curation. It is what I have tried to create in Moozly – a content discovery, writing and publishing platform that I am developing.
Hi Jane, Thanks for stopping by. Again, I don’t think a Paper.li is spammy in and of itself, but the automentions that are so prevalent really are. Once those are taken out, then the real question is does Paper.li have value as a curation tool? It seems, at this point, it does to some but not to most (at least most people here.)
Feel free to drop back by when Moozly is ready. Would love to hear more about it.
Thanks!
I take the same position as Bran regarding Paper.li. I understand why people think that it is spammy and many of the same people that complained to me about it feel that way about Triberr. I tell them all they are welcome to ignore or unfollow.
I haven’t found it to be a negative for me but I haven’t decided on the value yet. I have found that it has helped increase interaction with certain people that might not otherwise tweet with me.
Hey Jack, would be curious to hear how you feel about the value down the road. Paper.li just seems really redundant in so many ways.
I appreciate you sharing your experience here! Have a good night!
I think that Paper.li is a good idea that (i) was released before it was feature-rich, and (ii) aimed at the wrong purpose. Initially, it was (and still sorta is) promoted as a personal tool for making the content you follow on Twitter easier and more attractive to consume.
But what did people *really* try to use it for? As a destination for their followers, of course. And it’s not well-geared to do that. It is not nearly customizable enough to make it appropriate for presentment as a one to many product. It’s fine for personal use – it’s sorta like a more personalized Summify with a pretty web page.
It’s always interesting when users take a product and use it in a different way than intended by the creators. What matters now is how Paper.li responds to that, and how fast.
Hi Kirsten, not sure how I missed this comment earlier. I agree that it is really in the company’s hands now. The paper.li product has really been so misused.
To the point, I did a tweet the other day with the hashtag #inspiration in it, within a few hours I am notified that I am in so-and-so’s daily. Curious that someone had created a paper.li for inspiration, I actually clicked on the link (which I never do). The paper.li was a random collection of information with no topical cohesion. To me, it was the definition of noise, and that is the creator’s prerogative. Unfortunately, paper.li encourages the second part, spamming me with an @ mention of it.
I hope that Paper.li can find a way to make their product more relevant and useful. But as it stands now, I am still not a fan.
Thanks so much for stopping by and taking time to comment.
Adam Toporek recently wrote about this…Effective Small Business Hiring Practice: The Phone Screen
I just arrived here through a very interesting argument with a twitter follower – I heard about paper.li by being mentioned. I actually had a vigorous argument before acceding that maybe you didn’t have to be scum to use it. But it was awkward.
They said they use it just to collect the tweets from their friends and read it in a distilled way as they are busy. I say that sounds like a great service. But if that’s the service they are providing, please leave the @ mentions of the ‘contributors’ out of it – I didn’t like hearing a link I posted had been collected by a robot and then being mentioned in the thing just to freaking spread word about the site. I don’t want to know if you’re having an easier day reading my tweets unless it makes my day easier.
Hey Troy,
First of all, my apologies on the delayed response. I do try to respond to every comment, but sometimes the comments on older posts get buried when I have a new post out.
I really think you make the core argument — which is… it is one thing to use Paper.Li for curation, another to utilize the @ mentions to promote it randomly to people who did not ask to read it. I think if people turn off the @ mention part, then it is simply a personal “curation” tool — and to each his own if it works for them.
Thanks for stopping by! I really appreciate you taking time to leave a comment.
Adam Toporek recently wrote about this…The Definition of Customer Loyalty
Interesting thread. thank you all. As a publisher who is noticing all of the mentions in paper.li -my initial thought was that someone else is getting credit for our material. It almost appears to be like “frames” around our content. Is there any information about this and curious if panda is dinging content which shows up in paper.li as ‘derivatives?”
@youthsports, @concussions, @parenting
I am among those who generally disliked the spamminess of Paper.li .
However, recently a new interesting feature was added to publishers’ inventory and I decided to try it out.
The feature I am talking about is the ability to add different blog posts directly from browser. These posts are integrated into the news stream and appear in the next Paper.li issue.
I actually decided to go totally manually about my paper.li. This is how I did it.
1) I setup as a source RSS of few blogs
2) Then in Google reader I went through other of my favorite blogs (and different Google Alerts) and chose the most relevant and most interesting posts. Visited each of them and then through browser manually added them to the next issue of paper.li (using the new feature I mentioned above).
3) After getting notification by mail that the paper.li was created I checked it and edited it by removing some of the posts from headlines and changing their order to leave the most eye-catching posts at the top and making some logical order in presentation.
4) Then and only then I manually tweeted that specific issue of paper.li .
All was fine… until I discovered a problem.
When the next issue was out I checked the previous one in the archives of paper.li and found that all categories and tabs (except “headlines”) disappeared
I was greatly disappointed. So much manual work to make it nice and interesting (even I enjoyed reading it myself) and all that wasted in the end.
No! Unless they fix the bugs I can’t use their current service.
Actually, I’d like to know what other curation tools can produce good-looking results. Because – to say the truth – the best thing (at least for me) in paper.li is the visual appeal in how they organize the curated stories: categories, tabs, archives.
If all these features would work properly – I would be able to create very good sources of information.
Otherwise, it’s not worth invested effort. And I really don’t want to put it on auto-pilot producing some junk.
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Augis,
Thank you for the incredibly detailed and informative comment. I hope your story can help readers better understand the current pros and cons of Paper.li.
The only competitive product I know of is Scoop.it. As you might be able to tell from my post, I don’t use auto curation tools myself, so I don’t know how Scoop.it compares as a curation tool or if it has some of the same “spammy” issues. I will say that the one I saw was quite visually appealing.
Again, thanks for the epic comment! I appreciate you taking the time to share with the community here.
So my paper.li picked up your article because it screens for #curation.
So far I find paper.li a mostly positive mixed bag. Great filter for me. Mixed for those whose posts are included. Some like the contact and say so. Most ignore it. No one’s cussed me out yet.
Yeah, I’ve definitely seen a variety of experiences with the tool (as you can see from the comments too!). Glad you’ve found it useful — still think it’s better without the @ mentions, but I can see it’s working for you. Thanks for stopping by!