Springpad as a Curation Tool

I get really inspired and curious whenever we talk in class of different findings from my peers and things our professors find in what the internet offers. I was absent both classes last week, so I have yet to completely understand what our curation project is about, but I started to research different curation tools in the mean time. I really do love Pinterest, but I wanted to find another tool that I'm not as familiar with. I came across Springpad.

To be perfectly honest, I wanted to abandon it after spending 20 minutes on it. I've never heard of it before and I missed familiarity!! Because it offers so much more than I was expecting, I wanted to grab my blanket and crawl back to the comfort and simplicity of Pinterest. Alas.... I refrained. Good thing, too!

Here is the Springpad's video introduction for its website:

Springpad is a giant personal organizer in curating content that extends beyond only being able to pin/post a picture. You can create a "notebook" on a subject that can consist of "springs." These springs could be photos, videos, notes, voice memos, etc. You can upload or link. I think that is the part that I especially loved. I loved looking into people's notebooks and seeing their own notes and thoughts in addition to what they have curated from other users and sites on the web. It was like a historical journey they were taking me on in their findings from the past up to the present, so you can see the relevance and clarity of info evolving. I started a notebook about learning how to cook, (because as my grandma keeps reminding me, it's time I start learning, now that I'm married.) It's really fun to post a note with my thoughts and then a recipe I think is possible, then my post-recipe notes, and other thoughts or videos that I've found online that were useful to me in learning. It's like a blog in a format similar to Pinterest.

People who are experts on a subject, such as digital culture, create notebooks on their expertise and gather relevant posts from around the web. I'm already following one who claims to be a digital culture expert. I can see all of the info they have gathered and find important and worth reading.

It's also neat, because it serves as a personal assistant for you. When you go to the search bar on the site, it asks you what you want to do (cook, watch a show, listen to music, etc) and it will filter for you based on your answer and given history in the site.

I'm still exploring and learning about the site, but so far I really see its potential in becoming something really big and effective. I do struggle a tad with how much it covers in its features (again, I'm used to the simple Pinterest format), but I think I really enjoy Springpad's form of curation more than Pinterest's. Sometimes I feel like Pinterest feeds me a lot of repeated pins or pins that are not relevant to what I'm searching for. So far in my personal experience with it, Springpad seems to have a great filtering system and compartmentalizes well.

I encourage you all to check it out and share your thoughts on it!