• As a source of stories. One of the millions of just-in-time stringers twittering away may witness a revolution at any second;
• As a backchannel for other media, replacing the dial-in line used for TV and radio;
• As a traffic source;
• As a source to check stories. Traditional journalists can tap into their Twitter network faster than using their Rolodex or speed dial.

My outsider’s perception is that the main site gave its business spin off very little editorial real estate. And that it seldom pointed a traffic firehose toward its little brother. And folks who know about this stuff tell me that people inside the company had the same perception. [...] Ultimately, if the thing didn’t work on its own, it didn’t work on its own. But I’m a pretty regular Slate reader, and I frequently found that I learned about something The Big Money was running from someplace other than Slate.

As financial institutions shift to a customer centric focus, the importance of data and information in an organization has become more significant (Knox, 2000). Companies need to ensure that they are able to respond to the needs of the customers by delivering products and services that reflect the customer’s situation. This is only achieved by beginning with information that is accurate. Organizations can develop the best products and services, but if customer information is inaccurate, incomplete or worse still multiple versions of a particular customer’s details exist, their ability to respond decreases dramatically and unnecessary rework is required.

[At the Wall Street Journal we] certainly see more of our social media traffic go to non-subscription content, but in the end WSJ.com is a hybrid model and we are both trying to reach as many people are possible and convert as many of them to subscribers. How exactly do you go about doing that? Any follower of @WSJ on Twitter finds the majority of those links are to free content. We want that to be accessible to as many people as possible. However, we want to reach people who are non-subscribers too. And we certainly look at, if you're talking about metrics, we look at conversion rates from people who come from Twitter or Facebook versus other sources. It's something because of the hybrid site, we look at it all the time. It appears that a lot of competitors who are moving to pay models have to confront this as well.

Curation will continue to gain momentum as more marketers start incorporating curation into their content marketing strategies and major Web outlets enhance their features to address changing user needs. Online influencers that believe content curation is here to stay will stand behind it and continue to advocate for its value.