Curate more and create less as a recipe for success

There's a interesting case study reported upon by Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine, about the way in which creating a true network is the key to success in being a content provider. There is a lesson in this for magazines that are playing to their content strengths and building complementary websites.

A comparison is made between iVillage, which at one time was a dominant player among websites aimed at women and Glam, which has now eclipsed it. Glam's secret is creating only some of the content itself, relying instead on developed relationships with independent blogs and sites, about 400 publishers and 600 sites Rather than controlling and manufacturing content, it collaborates, featuring good content from them, selling ads on the blogs and sharing revenues.

Glam is a content network. But they don’t create all the content. They curate it. So we should curate more as we create less. That’s another way to say what I’ve said other ways: Do what we do best and link to the rest. Also: We need to gather more and produce less, so we also need to encourage others to produce more so we can gather it....

Glam is also and advertising network that supports the creation of content. That’s how you encourage others to produce more.

So in the end, Glam is really a platform. That’s the key.

As another example, Jarvis says that Adam Bly of Seed magazine curates the best science bloggers but then puts them wholly on the ScienceBlogs platform. They sell ads and some of the science bloggers can make good money (not as good as those Glam figures but still good for a science academic; high fashion pays better than high science).