This is the sixth report from our upcoming People's Insights Annual Report titled “Now & Next: Future of Engagement”, also available as a Kindle eBook and soon as an interactive iPad app. The report will highlight the ten most important frontiers that will define the future of engagement for marketers, entrepreneurs and changemakers: Crowdfunding, Behavior Change Games, Collaborative Social Innovation, Grassroots Change Movements, Co-creation Communities, Social Curation, Transmedia Storytelling, Collective Intelligence, Social Live Experiences and Collaborative Consumption. In each of these reports, we start by describing why they are important, how they work, and how brands might benefit from them; we then examine web platforms and brand programs that point to the future (that is already here); then finish by identifying some of the most important features of that future, with our recommendations on how to benefit from them. Do subscribe to our email newsletter to receive an invite to download a free copy of the interactive iPad app. Find out more: http://peopleslab.mslgroup.com/peoplesinsights/future-of-engagement/ Get the Kindle eBook: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D8ZZMDY

1. 6. SOCIAL CURATION
People's Insights Annual Report
Now & Next:
Future of Engagement

2. We are delighted to share that we will be
publishing the People’s Insights Annual
Report titled “Now & Next: Future of
Engagement” in February 2013 as an
interactive iPad app. The report will
highlight the ten most important frontiers
that will define the future of engagement
for marketers, entrepreneurs and change
makers: Crowdfunding, Behavior Change
Games, Collaborative Social Innovation,
Grassroots Change Movements,Co-creation
Communities, Social Curation, Transmedia
Storytelling, Collective Intelligence,
Social Recommendation and Social Live
Experiences.
Throughout 2012, 100+ planners on
MSLGROUP’s Insights Network have been
tracking inspiring web platforms and brand
programs at the intersection of social data,
citizenship, crowdsourcing and storytelling.
Every week, we pick up one project and
curate the conversations around it — on the
MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but also
on the broader social web — into a weekly
insights report. Every quarter, we compile
these insights, along with original research
and insights from the MSLGROUP global
network, into the People’s Insights Quarterly
Magazine. Now, we have synthesized the
insights from our year-long endeavor in future
scanning as foresights into the future of
engagement.
We believe, like William Gibson that, “the
future is already here; it’s just not very evenly
distributed.” So, innovative web platforms
in the areas of social data, citizenship,
crowdsourcing and storytelling point towards
interesting possibilities for brand programs
that leverage similar models to engage
people. In turn, the web platforms and brand
programs of today give us clues to the future
of engagement tomorrow.
In our reports on the ten frontiers that will
define the future of engagement, we start by
describing why they are important, how they
work, and how brands might benefit from
them; we then examine web platforms and
brand programs that point to the future
(that is already here); then finish by identifying
some of the most important features of that
future, with our recommendations on how to
benefit from them.
For the next ten weeks, we will publish
these reports one by one, then present them
together, in context, as an interactive iPad app.
Do subscribe to our email newsletter to receive
each report and also an invite to download a
free copy of the interactive iPad app.
People’s Insights Annual Report

3. 3
What is Social Curation?
Social curation involves aggregating, organizing and
sharing content created by others to add context,
narrative and meaning to it. Artists, changemakers
and organizations use social curation to showcase
the full range of conversations around a topic, add
more nuance to their own original content, and
set the stage to crowdsource content from their
community members.
The rise of social curation can be attributed to
three broad trends. First, people are creating
a constant stream of social media content,
including updates, location check-ins, blog
posts, photos and videos. Second, people are
using their social networks to filter relevant
content, by following others who share similar
interests. Third, social media platforms are also
curating content, by giving curation tools to users
(YouTube playlists, Flickr galleries, Amazon
lists, Foodspotting guides), using editors and
volunteers (YouTube Politics, Tumblr Tags)
or using algorithms (YouTube Trends, Auto-
generated YouTube channels, LinkedIn Today).
As a result, a number of niche social curation
platforms have emerged to enable people to
curate different types of content — including
links, photos, sounds and videos — into boards
(Pinterest), trees (Pearltrees (video)), pages
(Scoop.it (video)) and narratives (Storify (video),
Cowbird). Some social curation platforms are
focused on specific niches; for instance, Learni.st
(video) helps people curate lessons and Fancy
helps people discover cool things to buy.
In addition, media organizations are using social
curation to add depth to their programming
and media entrepreneurs are creating new
media business models around social curation.
News media organizations are curating
conversations around popular topics (The
Guardian #smarttakes) and important events
(Al Jazeera War on Gaza, Facebook and CNN
Media, organizations
and brands curate
content to drive social
engagement.
Election Insights, Current TV Politically Direct).
Entertainment media organizations are using
social curation to amplify the participation
around sports and entertainment events
(GRAMMY Live, Oscar Buzz, E! Entertainment’s
GRAMMY Heat Gauge (video), Fox MLB Playoff
Hub,Turner Sports Ryder Cup, Fox Sports’
Survival Sunday, ESPN NCAA Tournament of
Tweets, I Heart Radio’s Twitter Tracker) and
shows (X Factors USA, ABC’s Pretty Little Liars
Suspect Tracker, American Idol’s Fan Wall).
Media organizations are also creating hubs to
enable fans to connect with anchors and stars
(NDTV Social, CBS Connect Lounge). Media
entrepreneurs are building new types of media
platforms around posting excerpts from the
most relevant stories from around the web
(The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post)
or linking to them (Techmeme, mediagazer,
memeorandum, WeSmirch, Alltop (video)).
Finally, changemakers, artists, entrepreneurs,
and organizations are using social curation in
many meaningful ways. Changemakers are
curating stories to put a spotlight on important
issues (ViewChange (video), Human Rights
Channel (video), Amnesty International:
Free Pussy Riot Map Project, Global Voices
Threatened Voices) and provide support during
crisis situations (Japan earthquake, Haiti
earthquake (video)). Artists and storytellers are
curating social content to create new types of
artifacts (Band of the Day (video), The History of
Jazz (video), On the Way to Woodstock (video),
7 Days in September (video)). Entrepreneurs
and organizations are building curation-driven
communities around specific professional niches
(Venture Maven, Muck Rack) and sports leagues,
teams and athletes (Olympic Athletes’ Hub
(video), NBA China, MLB 140 Club, FC Barcelona,
Team Great Britain, NY Giants), artists (MTV
Music Meter (video), Billboard Social 50 Chart)
and even countries (Curators of Sweden (video)).

4. Some of these curation initiatives have gained
significant traction. For instance, Pinterest has
more than 40 million users and Huffington Post
is amongst the top 25 websites in the US with 39
million unique views and 37 million social actions
per month. The popularity of these platforms
shows that social curation is an increasingly
important model of social engagement for social
networks, media platforms, and organizations.
How does Social Curation work?
Typically, social curation platforms can be
classified across four dimensions: the interplay
between creating, curating and co-creating
content; the method of curation, through themes
or people; the visual representation of curated
content; and the possibilities for participation.
Most standalone social curation platforms
(Pinterest, Storify) are built almost entirely
around curated content, but others (Cowbird)
use a combination of original, curated and
crowdsourced content. Social curation platforms
created by media organizations typically aim to
amplify participation around their original content
(including news reports, TV shows and sports
events) through curation and co-creation, but
some, like Al Jazeera War on Gaza, focus almost
exclusively on curation. For many changemakers,
the value of social curation lies in showcasing
diverse point of views. For many artists, social
curation is only the first step in creating original
artifacts with well-crafted narratives.
Most social curation platforms search for and
filter content by keyword, then group relevant
content into themes, and sometimes highlight
the most influential people talking about the
themes (Current TV Politically Direct, Grammy
Live, Oscar Buzz). Other social curation platforms
filter content by people and organizations, then
highlight the most popular content created
or curated by them (Venture Maven, Olympic
Athletes’ Hub, NBA China, MLB 140 Club). Some
social curation programs are built around serial
Click to watch: The Olympic Athletes’ Hub
curation, with a number of people contributing
or curating content in sequence (Curators of
Sweden).
Social curation platforms use different
visualizations to showcase content. Streams
continue to be the most popular visualization
(Venture Maven, Oscar Buzz), but dynamic grids
are also becoming popular (GRAMMY Live).
Some platforms filter content by location and
plot them on interactive maps (Al Jazeera War
on Gaza, I Heart Radio’s Twitter Tracker). Some
platforms are organized as directories to search
for and find people (Olympic Athletes’ Hub,
NDTV Social). Many platforms use sophisticated
social data visualizations to display content (E!
Entertainment’s GRAMMY Heat Gauge, Current
TV Politically Direct). Increasingly, social curation
platforms are mashing up different visualizations
to create rich, interactive dashboards (Facebook
and CNN Election Insights).
Finally, different social curation platforms offer
different possibilities for participation. Some
platforms merely make it easy for people to
make sense of the curated content. Others also
enable community members to follow people,
vote on options, share content, add comments
or updates, and upload photos directly from the
interface. Still others add gamification elements
to the platform (Pac 12’s Battle of the Tweets),
or give community members access to special
content based on the level of participation
(Mission Impossible Flock-To-Unlock).
Social Curation for Brands
Almost all consumer brands, and many
organizations, have started experimenting with
social curation, by showcasing their own social
content, or social content about them, on their
websites.
Some brands have started creating short-term
social curation hubs to curate the conversations
around their own events, like fashion shows
Click to watch: Ushahidi Haiti Earthquake

5. 5
(Victoria’s Secret) and product launches (Ford
Fusion).
Other brands have created social curation
hubs around events they are participating in.
KPMG created the World Economic Forum Live
dashboard to showcase the most important
conversations and trends emerging at Davos
in 2012 and 2013. Taylor Made created a social
hub to help fans connect with athletes during
the 2012 US Open Golf. During the 2012 London
Olympics, GE tied up with NBC to track Twitter
conversations around the Olympics.
Another opportunity is to use social curation
to create niche communities around a shared
profession, passion, or purpose. For instance,
in 2009, Microsoft created a unique B2B
community called Exec Tweets, where people
could find and follow top business executives
from different sectors and engage with their
tweets.
Now, several brands are pioneering powerful branded content programs by integrating original content,
curated content and crowdsourced content. Pepsi Pulse has transformed the Pepsi homepage into
an interactive pop culture dashboard driven by social media, as part of its #LiveforNow campaign.
The dynamic grid dashboard is a mashup of original articles about pop culture and live performances,
content from Pepsi’s many celebrity endorsers, and relevant fan content, including content tagged
with #livefornow. Secret Mean Stinks Gang Up For Good uses a similar dynamic dashboard to mash
up original videos and tips on stopping teen bullying with fan conversations and photos from a series
of social media challenges for teens. iQ by Intel uses a sophisticated social curation system to mash
up Intel’s own original content with content created and curated by Intel employees to showcase
technology’s impact on our lives.

6. Source: meanstinks.com/
Source: pinterest.com
Finally, many brands are integrating elements of social curation into their co-creation communities, and
the boundary between curating content and co-creating content is blurring, especially in the context of
short-term campaigns.
Social Curation Case Studies
Throughout the year, we have tracked the conversations around a number of social curation platforms
and branded programs in our weekly insights reports and quarterly magazines; here are a few highlights.
Social Curation platform: Pinterest
Read the full case study on our blog or on Slideshare

7. 7
Pinterest is one of the largest social curation
platforms with 40 million users. Pinterest
enables people to upload, curate and organize
images on theme-based boards and embed or
share these boards on their blogs and social
networks. People can also browse through other
curator’s boards, like or share images, re-pin
images to their own boards, leave comments,
follow boards for updates and follow curators
who share similar interests.
MSLGROUP’s Gaurav Mishra noted:
“Pinterest’s goal is to connect everyone in the
world through the “things” they find interesting,
through their shared tastes and interests.
Pinterest combines two powerful ideas: curating
social interactions into stories (Storify) and
connecting people based on their interest graph
(Hunch)."
For instance, blogger Joe Murphy uses Pinterest
to discover new things:
“I browse what others pin in common are as such
as books, travel, or products, for ideas to inspire
my activities, books to read, places to visit… [For
Christmas,] I watched people’s pinboards of
products they love or want very carefully for ideas
to add to my shopping list or wish lists.”
Pinterest has received media attention and,
indeed, new users, for its focus on visual content
and for structuring content in boards as opposed
to streams. As Pinterest super-user Drew Hawkins
said:
“With the rise of platforms like Pinterest and
infographic sharing etc., it’s becoming more
obvious that people don’t like to read. If a story
can be told with visuals, it has more impact right
now. Pinterest offers that story-telling capability
using different boards that many other social
networks don’t exclusively offer.”
The social curation platform has also attracted
the attention of marketers. As Huffington Post
contributor Joe Waters pointed out:
“The heavy presence of women 25-44 on
Pinterest is what distinguishes it from other new
social media platforms, which are generally
populated by men 18-24. Here’s a site that
already has the audience everyone wants: women
and moms who make most of the household
buying decisions.”
Brands have used Pinterest to convey their brand
message (Whole Foods), to encourage people to
‘pin’ their products (Barneys New York Valentine’s
Day Wish List), to engage with prospective
customers (bmi Airlines Pinterest Lottery), and
to engage with Pinterest influencers (Kotex
Women’s Inspiration Day (video)).
Social Curation platform: The
Fancy
Read the full case study on our blog or on
Slideshare
Source: itunes.apple.com
Fancy is a social curation platform that also
serves as a commercial marketplace. People
create catalogs of things they want to own, sell
or buy, and ‘window shop’ or shop by scanning
streams of photos and searching by category,
price range, color and curated gift guides. Then,
people can make their purchases within the
platform itself.
The platform caters to a new breed of online
shoppers, as Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at
Forrester Research, pointed out:
“The Web is very much about spearfishing and
people looking for things they already know they
want—that’s why Google has been so successful…
These guys are supporting the other audience of
shrimpers out there who are just looking for cool
things to discover.”

8. In December 2011, the Swedish Institute and
VisitSweden launched Curators of Sweden and
invited ‘a new Swede every week’ to run the
tourism board’s official Twitter account @Sweden.
Curators were nominated online and selected
Source: twitter.com/sweden
based on their profession, interests and their
personal tweets.
Jeremy Stahl, social media editor at the Slate,
noted:
“The hope of the campaign is that every new
curator will share his or her personal experiences
of what it’s like to be Swedish, while illuminating
something about the broader culture.”
The program has attracted plenty of attention,
both positive and negative, for the Swedish
tourism board’s open-mindedness and
democratic approach, for the curators’ unique
stories and provocative debates, and for the
curators’ choice of ‘inappropriate’ language and
topics. Melissa Agnes, a thought leader on crisis
management, noted:
“In terms of social media transparency and
creativity, this campaign definitely takes the lead.
With 69,000+ followers, its proving to be wildly
successful since, like a reality show, the world
is sitting on the edge of their seats to see what
happens next.”
The program has been recognized by the PR
industry with two Swedish Golden Eggs and
an international Gold Clio, and has also given
rise to a new format of engagement on Twitter
called Rotation Curation, employed so far by 70
countries, cities, people and cultural groups, and
causes.
Click to watch: Curators of Sweden
Fashion blogger Elizabeth Canon noted:
“The Fancy allows merchants to “claim”
products that are posted and sell them directly
on the Fancy. This provides the Fancy with a
revenue stream, the user with a more seamless
transaction experience and the merchant with a
higher likelihood of purchase intent.”
Fancy earns a fee of 10% for all products sold
through its platform.
The platform further marries social curation
and e-commerce with offerings such as the
Fancy Box, a subscription-based monthly gift
box featuring some of the most fancy’d items,
curated by the fancy community; an embeddable
buy button for bloggers and publishers; and an
affiliate program that rewards curators.
Fancy also incorporates social networking
elements such as a like button (called ‘fancy’),
notifications and the ability to follow people,
and gamification elements such as badges and
rewards to encourage people to upload more
content, explore partner stores on the platform
and invite friends to join the community.
Fancy crossed 2 million users and $200,000 in
weekly revenues in October 2012.
Social Curation program:
Curators of Sweden
Read the full case study on our blog or on
Slideshare

9. 9
Source: mediabistro.com
Source: iq.intel.com
Branded program: Pepsi Pulse
Read the full case study on our blog or on
Slideshare
Pepsi Pulse is a dynamic website that is updated
in real-time to showcase “the most inspiring Now
moments” in pop culture, including music, sports
and entertainment, based on social popularity. In
addition, Pepsi shares real time original content,
including celebrity challenges and behind-
the-scenes videos from live events, and invites
consumers to add #Now or #LiveForNow to their
tweets, instagrams, and pins to be featured on
the Pulse.
Pepsi’s partner NewsCred claims that it is
“reinventing news – for publishers, brands and
their audiences” by licensing and curating full text
articles, photos and video from publishers and
creating customized content experiences for brands.
According to Fast Co.Create’s Joe Berkowitz,
Pulse “embodies the marketing shift from ad
messaging to continuous engagement.”
Brian Solis, a principal analyst at the Altimeter
Group and author of The End of Business As
Usual, noted:
“Pepsi is learning, as every business in learning,
that if you want to remain relevant with this new
type of consumer, you have to be where they are,
you have to talk their language… [and keep] them
feeling like they want to be part of your brand.”
Marketer and blogger Blair Smith believes that
Pepsi can go one step further, and showcase
original content to engage more meaningfully:
“For Pepsi Pulse to be successful it has to go
beyond reorganizing existing content and fill the
channel with original content. Pepsi has to bring
together its sponsorships, events, contests and
other unique assets around the world into Pulse.
But beyond that it needs to somehow make itself
indispensable to its key audience, finding space
amongst all of the other social channels we use.”
Branded program: iQ by Intel
Read the full case study on our blog or on
Slideshare
iQ by Intel spotlights how people use technology
in inspiring ways, to showcase technology’s
impact on media, life and the planet. The iQ
algorithm sources content on technology’s
impact on society from vetted online sources
based on social popularity. Then, it crowdsources
the most popular content amongst Intel
employees based on what they are sharing
publicly, and publishes links and excerpts from
them, with original content from sources like
Intel Free Press and Intel’s Creators Project on a
touch-optimized interface.
iQ was inspired in part from thought leader
Tom Foremski’s notion that “Every Company is
a Media Company.” Foremski believes that we
are witnessing a major business transformation
and that companies “must learn how to publish,
listen, and converse in a very fragmented media
world”:
“Every company is a media company because
every company publishes to its customers, its staff,
its neighbors, its communities. It doesn’t matter if
a company makes diapers or steel girders, it must
also be a media company and know how to use all
the media technologies at its disposal.
iQ is Intel’s answer to this challenge of creating a
consistent stream of compelling content. With iQ,
Intel focuses on content that communicates the
power of technology and not the product itself. In
his review of Intel iQ, social media thought leader
Shel Israel noted:
“All content includes technology but the focus is
not. This is an end-user publication and would
not appeal to deep technologists. I would assume
a great many of the topics being covered involve
products powered by Intel, but on the surface, that
appears to be besides the point.”

10. Source: business.pinterest.com
Source: iq.intel.com
Blogger and social media professional Michael
Kieran highlighted the benefit of this model:
“At a time when we’re all drowning in content,
there’s real value in having customers organically
share content that’s aligned with your company’s
marketing messages."
As a next step, Intel is building its own
customized social curation software based on its
proprietary monitoring technology called Social
Cockpit (video) and hopes to involve 5000+
employees in the curation process.
The Future of Social Curation
We believe that social curation will change how
media organizations and brands tell stories and
engage their communities in 2013.
We expect news and entertainment media
organizations to experiment with new business
models tied to social curation.
We expect news media organizations to tightly
integrate original content, curated content, and
crowdsourced content to add depth to their
stories and increase social engagement around
them. Steven Rosenbaum, CEO of video curation
platform Magnify.net and author of Curation
Nation, argues:
“The most successful curators include sites like
The Huffington Post, that embrace the three-
legged-stool philosophy of creating some content,
inviting visitors to contribute some content,
and gathering links and articles from the web.
Created, contributed, and collected — the three
’c’s is a strong content mix that has a measurable
impact.”
We expect lifestyle and entertainment media to
go further, and add a social commerce layer to
this three-part strategy, to create new business
models like Fancy that blur the boundaries
between media and commerce players.
We also expect more brands to create more
powerful social curation programs. Many brands
are already active on Pinterest and we are likely
to see new types of social curation programs
on the platform with the launch of Pinterest
business accounts and Pinterest-focused content
marketing tools like Curalate. Specifically, we
will see many brands use Pinterest, and niche
Pinterest-like social curation platforms, for social
commerce.
In addition, we will see corporations and
brands that are already committed to serious
long-term branded content programs (LVMH
Nowness, Coca Cola Journey, American Express
OpenForum, Qualcomm Spark, Cisco Network,
IBM Smarter Planet,HSBC Business Without
Borders) to follow the example of media
organizations. We expect them, and many others,
to design branded content programs (like Pepsi
Pulse, iQ by Intel and Secret Gang Up For Good)
that have specific strategies for creating long-
form original content artifacts, using them as
provocations to curate and crowdsource short-
form content, then creating new long-form
content artifacts from such short-form content.

11. 11
Click to watch: Storyful – It’s all about people
Finally, we expect a number of startups to create
social curation products for brands and media
organizations. Products like Storyful (video),
News Cred (video) and Swift River (video) focus
on media organizations and specialize in curating
and syndicating the most relevant content. Other
products like Percolate (video), Mass Relevance
(video), CurationStation (video), Olapic (video)
and Publish This (video) target entertainment
media organizations, corporations and brands,
and offer features to drive social engagement.
To address this big opportunity, we are creating
our own proprietary social curation software
that will source the most relevant stories on a
topic from vetted sources, rank them based on
social popularity on a private dashboard, and
enable human curators to publish them on social
networks, email newsletters, mobile apps and
touch-enabled dynamic web magazines, and
drive social engagement around them.

12. Learn more about us at:
peopleslab.mslgroup.com | twitter.com/peopleslab
People’s Lab is MSLGROUP’s proprietary
crowdsourcing platform and approach that
helps organizations tap into people’s insights for
innovation, storytelling and change.
The People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform
helps organizations build and nurture public
or private, web or mobile, hosted or white
label communities around four pre-configured
application areas: Expertise Request Network,
Innovation Challenge Network, Research &
Insights Network and Contest & Activation
Network. Our community and gaming features
encourage people to share rich content, vote/
comment on other people’s content and
collaborate to find innovative solutions.
The People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform
and approach forms the core of our distinctive
insights and foresight approach, which consists
of four elements: organic conversation analysis,
MSLGROUP’s own insight communities, client-
specific insights communities, and ethnographic
deep dives into these communities. The People’s
Insights Quarterly Magazines showcase our
capability in crowdsourcing and analyzing
insights from conversations and communities.
People’s Lab:
Crowdsourcing
Innovation & Insights

13. Write to us to start a conversation on the future of engagement.:
Pascal Beucler,
SVP & Chief Strategy Officer
(pascal.beucler@mslgroup.com)
Janelle Dixon,
North America Head of Insights
(janelle.dixon@mslgroup.com)
Dominic Payling,
Europe Head of Insights
(dominic.payling@mslgroup.com)
Gaurav Mishra,
Asia Head of Insights
(gaurav.mishra@mslgroup.com)
mslgroup.com | twitter.com/msl_group
MSLGROUP is Publicis Groupe's strategic
communications and engagement group,
advisors in all aspects of communication
strategy: from consumer PR to financial
communications, from public affairs to
reputation management and from crisis
communications to event management.
With more than 3,700 people, its offices span
22 countries. Adding affiliates and partners
into the equation, MSLGROUP's reach
increases to 4,000 employees in 83 countries.
Today the largest 'PR and Engagement'
network in Europe, Greater China and India, the
group offers strategic planning and counsel,
insight-guided thinking and big, compelling
ideas – followed by thorough execution.