I think we’ll see more and more convergence between curation and creation in the future. There are already signs of that.

That’s why audiences appreciate it so much, especially when they feel a personal affinity with the curating brand: if it’s done very well, we as audience members almost feel as if the curator is doing some of our thinking for us.
Georgina

At the top of the list for me would be Radiolab (http://twitter.com/#!/wnycradiolab) — they combine curation with creation really well and are excellent at using both for engagement.

One example of a split account approach I like is that of Learnable.com (http://twitter.com/#!/learnablehq and http://www.facebook.com/learnable). The brand’s online presence unites the people that make the brand with the people that buy it. But the accounts of the brand’s developers (http://twitter.com/#!/sentience and http://twitter.com/#!/pda, for example) are heavy on the creation side of the equation, building and leveraging relationships through social media to develop and improve product.

On a the personal brand front, Brian Solis (http://twitter.com/#!/briansolis) mixes curation and creation really well. On the other hand, creator Michael Pollan (http://twitter.com/#!/michaelpollan) does a great job of curation through social media, but not much in the way of creation.

Hope this clarifies the points I’ve raised. Kristy has also provided some interesting examples below.
Georgina

That said, curation can be very time consuming (I speak from experience). Why? In the same way that companies often produce content (ie. press releases) that are of little or no value to the intended reader, there’s a lot of pointless drivel that’s posted across the web every day.

My point: depending upon the topic, curation can be a like mining for rare metals, “staking your claim” as a thought-leader is often the easy part…

How about some examples of companies that do curation or creation well? I’d like to see who you consider good at both functions.

Guy