Paper.li is a curation tool that publishes daily on-line newspapers automatically generated by predetermined keywords and hashtags from Twitter and Facebook, as well as from RSS feeds.
The SABC Media Libraries started their own newspaper
SABCMediaLib.li a month ago.
The results are very positive:
- After a month Paper.li is already the biggest referring URL for our blog.
- As referring site it comes third after Google.com and Google.co.za.
- We have gotten a lot of RTs and mentions on Twitter because of the Twitter update every day on the SABC Media Libraries twitter account: SABCMediaLib
- The online newspaper has brought a daily stream of recent events, thoughts and content in the arena of libraries and archives (keywords and hashtags that were selected) that would have gone by unnoticed.
- We are connecting with thought leaders in their fields of expertise by following and retweeting some of the valuable content.
- It does not acquire any effort on our part after it has been set up. The set-up takes about 20 minutes. From there it is only an editorial function required when unsuitable content is displayed. In this month it has only happened once that I had to delete three "adult content" articles from the paper.
I have seen some dissenting views about paper.li, but I find the content to be extremely valuable with regards a certain niche topic. If you consider that it is an automatic process, it makes it all the more commendable.
The most important factor seems to be the initial five selection criteria. They are the most important to ensure good quality content making its way to the newspaper. When you are not happy with the content being generated, you can also go and change your criteria. The next update of the newspaper will generate the new selection criteria results.
We have a
Knowledge Café #LibCafe upcoming in two weeks' time, and for that purpose we have started another Paper.li newspaper. The topic covers Knowledge Management and Knowledge Cafés.
What are your thoughts on Paper.li?
