OK I just nearly threw my computer out the window - defenestrated it as the Blond Knitter would say. The last thing I'd want as an epitaph would be "She Knew About Geek Stuff." So let's just avoid the topic of the almost-certain futility of gathering information, and cut to Scoop.It! I've mentioned it before, but I want to give an impartial (they're not paying me, honest) outline of how I think this handy-dandy little web app could be useful for writers.
You may have heard of Paper.li - well, Scoop.It! is similar. Both apps allow you to pull content you come across on the interwebz into a "newsletter". Paper.li is geared more toward schmoozing your Twitter friends, sort of like a big retweet as explained on Molly Greene's blog. I haven't used it because it sounds a bit too automated for my taste. I'm often mentioned in Paper.li newsletters as a contributor, but the whole process seems a bit random and impersonal.
When I find something interesting or well-written in blogs or otherwise, I tend to tweet the link because I think somebody else may be interested too. What I was looking for was a way to gather the best stuff into topics - I was doing this with Evernote, but Evernote feels a bit like throwing stuff into a big shoebox, never to be looked at again. I've gradually moved away from the shoebox model - pictures are going onto Pinterest, and I wanted to do something with all the written material I find. There's something addictive about being able to share what you find with people - I wanted someone to open that shoebox and go "OOOO look at all this great stuff!"
Bouquets: I like Scoop.It!'s big, bold default post style. I like that you can "rescoop" posts from other people's Scoop.It! newsletter into your own, giving them the credit. I like that you can star one post to stay at the top - guess what, I do it with my own blog posts, which is called Blowing Your Own Trumpet. I like the fact that you get basic stats to watch your followers grow with the free version. I am very happy that there is no advertising on my free newspaper, although I'm sure it'll come eventually. The blog plugin (see below) is uber-cool.
Brickbats: The free version lacks the ability to format or insert links in your own comments. It also lacks anything beyond basic analytics. The paid versions start at a horrendous $12.99 per month, and then jump to $79/month for the business version (which is the one with the analytics). I just don't think the app's useful enough, in our impoverished writer world, for that kind of money. After all, the incredibly informative Publisher's Marketplace only costs $20/month. And last but not least, the Scoop.It! interface is not that intuitive. It still has a beta-ish feel to it. And the default background is black, shudder shudder.
Still, this could be a useful tool for a writer. Say you were researching Abraham Lincoln - you could collect all the articles you find on the internet into a Scoop.It! topic. And then you could link to that topic on the page that talks about your book, in addition to providing a select bibliography (leaving people to buy your book to get the full bibliography). Better still, Scoop.It! will create a snippet of code for you that you can use to create a slideshow on your blog for your topic (see top right for mine). And I can confirm that the slideshow works on an iPad, which means it is not created in Flash and therefore Apple-friendly (from what I can see, it's a javascript widget).
And although I'm not crazy about the user interface, it's early days and I really didn't have that much trouble finding my way around.
What do you think? Would you want to use something like this?
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