The term "curation" appears to be on the rise lately in many web, iPhone and iPad applications emerging and mainstream blog articles being published such as “Why Content Curation is Here to Stay” and “Curators of the Real-Time Web: Distilling the chatter to relevant, actionable information” although this is not showing up too much yet on google trends.
User Generated Content (UGC) has become the "norm" in many web2.0 and post web2.0 applications where text, images, audio, video etc. is openly shared and licenced with licences such as Creative Commons or freely shared via the "embed" where legal reuse and repurposing rights and obligations can sometimes be difficult to ascertain due to that lack of an adopted content licence.
RSS is well established for sharing a "collection" of resources from a single source and OPML is gaining adoption for "collections" of resources from multiple sources. On the real-time-web front protocols such as PubSubHubbub allow the real-time publishing of feeds but the usefulness and relevance of these feeds appears to be sparking a new area of interest in web apps.
One aspect of "Web 3.0" could be seen as the "return of the expert" and the rise and validation of the "subject matter expert" where their curated "works" is seen as holding value over and above other people and their collections due to them having more contextual social capital or "whuffie".
The newspaper "revenue crunch" and move to "paid for content" behind the paywall needs creators and curators of content that have a high level of social capital in order to survive.
Wikipedia is the current stalwart of edited crowdsourced collective intelligence although there are many other upcoming sources around such as google Knol which relies on Subject Matter Experts accepting crowdsourced contributions but ultimately relying on an individual (the SME) acting as the sole arbitrator to a "content object". All of Wikipedia's content is licenced with Creative Commons cc-by-sa licences as is the vast majority of google Knol content.
On the real-time web and micro blogging front "curation" primarily relates to twitter favourites (able to monitor and review via RSS) and lists which can be aggregated into OPML feeds for importing into personal homepages such as NetVibes. RSS feeds is the main protocol for accessing other realtime status update feeds from applications such as facebook, buzz, linkedin etc.
The Difference Engine (@differenceengin - see previous post on launch of programme) appears to have a startup emerging from it's first cohort (led by @basti and @sampicli) that is embracing "curation" with their curated.by application - more to be announced this week in the final week of this programme and at @thinkingdigital conference workshops.
"Curation", in the educational context, can relate to the "everybody has something to learn and everybody has something to teach" saying as the School of Everything strapline goes. Current web savvy users share links on facebook, twitter etc., engage in conversation and dialogue via blog comments, friendfeed, buzz, wave etc., articulate considered thoughts via blogs using wordpress and microblogs using posterous etc., and vote on and "like" "links" and content via facebook and digg etc. - all of this is essentially engagement around a "social object" as @gapingvoid calls it. All of this sharing is directly relevant to the area of e-portfolio's / personal learning environments etc.
We are currently in the "Wild West" as @jobsworth states in relation to privacy and sharing but there is a huge opportunity to curate, collate and legally share (e.g. @doctorow books that can be downloaded for free using licencing regimes such as Creative Commons) content that is contextually related and has relevance and utility to the end user and to discover a ROI from this curation activity.
It's early days on the "curation" front but it is looking like it could be the "new black" for the remainder of 2010...!