Mashable has a good story out about the ways in which people are using their social media connections to create personalized streams of news that match their interests.  I blogged about one such tool recently -- FlipBoard -- but as Mashable points out, there are quite a few other examples out there.  You can read the article here:  http://bit.ly/bfMbL7 (hat tip to Tom Baker for pointing it out to me).

One thing that becomes clear is the evolving nature of social media.  Not only are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. now a way to keep in touch with a network of friends and colleagues.  They are also way to build a customized reading list -- to stay abreast of the kinds of news and information which we might miss if we just followed our usual reading patterns.  And who better to trust with those recommendations than those we have chosen to follow on the social media platforms.  Those we follow now become "curators", pointing us to content that they found interesting and think we might want to know about.

Editors, of course, play that same role as curators of content -- not just creators of original work but also pointing our readers toward work created by others that would be of interest.  Readers, I think, count on good editors now to be less parochial and restrictive, and assume that websites will point them outside to others' work, and not try to restrict readers within a single domain.  That's why I favor including on our redesigned websites blog postings and twitter feeds from selected outside contributors -- with our editors doing the selecting, deciding which voices are the most worthwhile for our readers to hear.  Our newspapers and magazines have done this for years, selecting outside columnists and opinion writers who have expert knowledge on a topic or a point-of-view that we think our readers would want to know about. 

Social media now allows that same curatorial process to go on, but with many more curators involved in the process.  As the Mashable article points out, there are now numerous tools for accessing the "Personalized Social Media News Stream", and undoubtedly more coming.  But the world still needs high quality editors who have the background knowledge to separate the "signal from the noise".  That's a role that I want to make sure we are positioned to play on behalf of the readers we serve, whether on existing platforms or new ones as they come along.