Scoop.it: Become an authority in your vertical

1Scoop.it (tagline: “share ideas that matter”) ranks as one of the top content curation tools right now. The service, which has both free and premium versions, styles itself as a series of online magazines centered on niche topics. Pick a topic you feel knowledgeable or passionate about and start adding to your collection: articles, blog posts, Twitter lists, videos and so on. Socialbrite’s Debra Askanse, for example, has Scoop.it pages on Facebook and Twitter best practices.

Gabriella Sannino put it well: “Scoop.it is like being your own newspaper editor.” The quality of the curators on Scoop.it is high, though you’ll need to root around a bit to find the subjects and authorities that interest you the most. Note: While you can embed it on your own site, it works better by viewing the topics on the main Scoop.it site.

Storify: Curate your next event

2Next time you’re covering a nonprofit conference or putting on an event, consider firing up a Storify account and then pick and choose the best images, tweets, blog posts, videos, etc., that others publish and tie them up with a nice ribbon — your overall take on the proceedings, of course. Storify is becoming a favorite of bloggers, journalists and Tweeps who like its curated take on current events. You can pull from blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and many other sources and then export it to your WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous blog or share it on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus via social buttons. (Side note: I know the founder, Burt Herman, who’s a nice guy, and I always root for former-journalists-turned-entrepreneurs.)

Pearltrees: Cultivate your interests

3My vow for the fall is to spend more time with Pearltrees, which recently did a reboot and looks to be one of the most advanced tools you can add to your curation toolkit. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but here’s how it works: Your browser app lets you “pearl” the page you’re visiting. Connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts, then start organizing interests into topic folders (“pearltrees”). Any other curator expert in your topic area might ask to team up with you (and vice versa) to make your tree branches richer. You can share your pearls through Twitter, Facebook, email or embed them in your own site. You can also share pearls with colleagues or your own team. Curators, behold the potential of the pearl.

Pinterest: Share your favorite visuals

4Pinterest entreats you to “organize and share the things you love,” but it’s really all about compelling visuals. (And, by the way, here’s a Pinterest board on curation tools.) This year Pinterest has become the third most popular social network in the world, trailing only Facebook and Twitter, by making it drop-dead simple to “pin” images that you think are cool. The more serious Pinterest curators create boards around topics, like nonprofit marketing strategist Noland Hoshino. You can, too.

Delicious: Find & bookmark cool stuff

5Delicious, the first social bookmarking site, is arguably the granddaddy of the curation movement. Now that Yahoo! sold the service to YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, there’s wind in its sails again. It’s pretty simple: Find a valuable story or post, bookmark it and share it with the community. Your tags can be used by you or anyone (if you select public rather than private). The collective body of knowledge on any topic — such as wildlife, bears or HIV prevention — is simply staggering.

Bundlr: Bundle your multimedia

6With Bundlr you can create topic pages with photos, videos, tweets and documents and then share them with everyone. I haven’t used the service but it looks to be influenced by the Pinterest craze.

BagTheWeb: Add to a knowledge network

7OK, now we’re getting a bit repetitive. BagTheWeb helps users curate Web content through a different metaphor: Create a “bag” to collect, publish and share any content from the Web. One interesting twist is that BagTheWeb enables users to build networks of bags so that topic areas can be linked together to provide rich datasets about any subject.