Digital Curation. Who out there is archiving and showcasing all of these digital milestones that so quickly drop off the radar? The evolution of Flash, ephemeral virals, amazing but short-lived microsites. Sure, data capturing flourishes. But I’m not interested in analytics (at least not for the sake of this post)…I’m talking about digital communication as a form of art.

This is a subject I’ve been thinking about more and more, particularly since last week when we launched Pretty Loaded. It started as an internal sprint, a tribute to the humble preloader which, as technology improves, is not sticking around for very long.



It has been a lovely viral success, I’m pleased to report. Activity on Twitter as well as blog coverage (on sites like Ad Age, AdWeek, Creative Review, Agency Spy, Waxy and others) definitely brought about buzz. So far, we’ve witnessed over 70 days of aggregate viewing.

That’s all fine and well. But what’s next? How do we grow Pretty Loaded over time so that it reflects the essence of the preloader? It is a digital museum, and we want to treat it as such. There is plenty of shoddy work that is worth forgetting about. A digital curator must find and select that which creates a paramount picture of the subject matter.

While researching this subject, I found a nice piece on Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion. He said that curators (if you look for them) are all around us, pointing to Mahalo (a community of curators) and the curating methods of IAB Smartbrief. I wonder though where digital museums should even live? On a website, in a physical space, in the back pocket of your jeans? (I refer to the pair with the iPhone-shaped rectangle.) Websites aren’t going away anytime soon. But we’re witnessing a rapid shift to portable content. It has made information both transient and ubiquitous. This leaves me feeling equal parts entertained and anxious.

Something to Think About: A few hundred years from now, when I presume people will live on the moon and have collapsible Kindles, what will they know of this digital revolution? Which aspects and elements do you want to be remembered?