"What's the problem with Google search? Spam, say the critics. Or rather, a new genre of not-quite-spam. So-called ""content farms"" have sprung up to produce thousands of articles per day with titles that match popular search terms -- dig in to the content however, and you'll find it anything but useful."

"""This year it really hit home just how badly Google's systems have been spammed, as typically anything on Page 1 of the search results was some form of SEO spam""."

"""Are we seeing the first signs that algorithmic search has failed as a strategy? Is the next generation of search destined to be less algorithmic and more social?"""

"Kedrosky too proposes a human-powered solution, declaring that ""curation is the new search."""

"It's there, I think, where we might finally see curation bloom: On Twitter and Facebook, where users share millions of links per day without even the mildest sense that they're ""curators"" of the web."

"But ultimately, and with a few stumbles, we'll find numerous ways to combine human judgment with the efficiency of algorithms."

"“Curation comes up when search stops working,” says author and NYU Professor Clay Shirky."

"“Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.”"

"“If I was starting The Village Voice today, I would not print anything. I would not hire a ton of writers. I would build a website and a mobile app (or two or three). I would hire a Publisher and a few salespeople. I would hire an editor and a few journalists. And then I’d go out and find every blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube, and other social media feed out there that is related to downtown NYC and I would pull it all into an aggregation system where my editor and journalists could cull through the posts coming in, curate them, and then publish them.”"