Introduction to Scoop It

The website, Scoop.It is a site designed to help people curate and bookmark content that they find useful or interesting on the Internet. The program allows each user five free topics and then uses sophisticated search tools to literally help the curator seek out the content that will fit into that topic.

Content is saved with an image, usually taken from the content, a blurb from the content, and then with any accompanying commentary from the curator herself. All content on a particular topic is then saved on one document, called a magazine, in a very attractive format. Comments and likes, in Facebook style, are also allowed for each item that has been curated.

I discovered Scoop.It, myself, while looking at my Google Analytics data, and seeing that I was receiving traffic to my hubs from this source. I was impressed by what I found, and started to learn how it worked. I am still a newbie here, but am excited about sharing the site with other writers, learners and business people.

Currently, I curate topics that match websites that I own, as well as things that fit my general interests. For example, a topic on journaling matches the site I am currently developing called Journaling Helps.

Ever since we started cruising the Internet, we have been looking for ways to remember good sites that we see, and to share them with others. We have used bookmarking services such as Diigo, Google Bookmarks and Delicious.

We started with bookmarking, and that has slowly moved into curating, with certain sites containing elements of curation. Curation is the sorting, organizing and assessment of content, as opposed to the simple saving of content.

According to an article from Social Media Today, content curation is becoming more and more necessary as we become inundated with content from many sources, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Sorting through the hubris, and making educated choices about what's good, and what's noteworthy is the function of the content curator.

The act of curating content goes beyond the mere act of bookmarking articles that you like, and has become a way of showing your own knowledge and good taste in a particular area, or topic. Whether you are an online writer wanting to prove your authority, a hobbyist wanting to showcase your impeccable taste, or a company seeking to gain authority in your niche, curating content is a way to show that you are an expert in your area of knowledge.

This works in a similar way that writing a weekly column in the newspaper has worked for small business owners for years. For example, a pet store owner might write about how to take care of fleas in a dog. She writes this content for free, thus showing her knowledge to the community, increasing her credibility, and hopefully, gaining the trust of the community, and hopefully, clients.

By curating content in a particular niche, you gain the credibility and the following to be able to present your own content, product or service to those who have come to trust what you have to say, and your knowledge of the subject area.

Since being introduced to Hubpages two years ago, I have become more and more familiar with the online world of social media, and am active on a number of different sites, including Pinterest, Delicious, Paper.li and Digg. Right now, one of my favourites is definitely Scoop It, because of a number of its appealing features. Here are some of my favourite features of this program:

• Ability to search Google and other search engines using specific keywords
• Ability to sort through a large amount of content within a short period of time
• A gorgeous layout that literally looks like a professional magazine
• Full editing ability to enable you to comment on the content in whatever way you like.
• Ability to easily scoop up material while surfing the net, using a handy bookmarklet.
• Capability of disseminating a topic using a beautiful widget that can then be placed on your own website or blog.
• A limit on topics helps to cut down on spam, and encourage quality.

Another thing I really appreciate about Scoop.It is that I find that it comes up quite frequently when I do Internet searches, showing me that people will be seeing more and more of this content. In other words, Google seems to like them!