What influencers broke...

I can hardly believe it: we’ve arrived at the second-to-last newsletter of my Future of Networking Forecast! 🤯

Over the last five months, we’ve covered serious ground exploring the 10 (well, nearly 10!) trends set to shape how we’ll build and grow professional relationships in an AI world:

Foundational Shifts:

🔗 Trend 1: AI-Enhanced Networking
🔗 Trend 2: Agents, Avatars, and Automation
🔗 Trend 3: Professional Networks as a Measurable Asset

Behavioral and Cultural Shifts:

🔗 Trend 4: Remote by Default, In-Person by Design
🔗 Trend 5: Privacy is a Power Move
🔗 Trend 6: The Rise of Micro-communities

Human-Centric Shifts:

🔗 Trend 7: Connection Architecture is a New and Niche Skill
🔗 Trend 8: Humanness is a Premium

And now, for number nine…

🔮 My ninth prediction for the Future of Networking is that curators will rise and superconnectors will lead.

The Washington Post’s food critic retired after 20 years of concealing his identity and wearing disguises so that he could review restaurants without receiving special treatment. What he understood and took seriously for two decades is that recommendations only work when they are real and without ulterior motives. 

When I go to a great restaurant or find an amazing time-saving product, I have to tell people about it, because I want people to know and enjoy it. And when they come back around and tell me they loved their experience too, it’s the best feeling. We all know this beautiful cycle of making recommendations. We also know that the best recommendations come from people you know, like, feel similar to, and most of all, trust. 

But the rise of the influencer broke this cycle. We know influencers recommend products because they’re getting paid to, and that’s diminished our trust.

Now, we’re looking to other people in the digital age: curators and superconnectors.

Before we go any further, let’s define—and compare—our terms.

Curators are people who can filter and curate content, lists, and even networks. Like an artist, they know which materials to use to make a beautiful piece of art: or in some cases: a list of the best products, places, ideas, books, etc.

Superconnectors take things a step further: they know how to drive action, build community, and move big things forward because of the introductions they’re making.

While curators know how to collect information, superconnectors know how to activate and bring the right people together to get real results. Curators know how to create high-value lists and compilations, but superconnectors know the right people because they’ve built up a solid network and have put the time into relationships. They have credibility, reputation, expertise, and people respond to them when they need something.

Together, curators and superconnectors will come to define what Adobe’s Head of Growth calls “The Connection Economy.”

Check out his spot-on LinkedIn post👇🏽

The good news: I believe anyone can become a curator in a short amount of time, and that anyone can be a superconnector if they put in the work.

(If you want to become a curator or superconnector, but don’t have the time, this is exactly what my company does. As a Connection Architecture firm company, we analyze, map, measure, and manage your executive network. Then we guide you to the perfect mix of engagement with your existing and new connections—by helping you provide unique value to them.)

In a world where there is so much noise, information, content, and AI slop already, the people who will stand out are those that know how to sift through it all, synthesize what they find, and make it easy for others to quickly gain understanding and value.

As a bonus, becoming a curator and a superconnector are both ways that you can expand your network because you’re doing things that make you appealing to people: you have real recommendations, real insights, real connections, real examples, etc.

Leading companies are recognizing this shift and honing in on what it looks like to provide trusted, curated recommendations—and how to meet recommendation-seekers where they’re at.

Consider that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky recently revamped Airbnb’s entire platform to make it easier for people to book chefs, photographers, tour guides, and more. He recognized that Airbnb was already a place people were looking for places to go, so why not also offer them things to do? According to Chesky, they don’t let just anyone list their services on the platform. Instead, they work with pre-established businesses and essentially review and recommend them to you, in the same way you’d check with friends to get recommendations for a photographer to book.

Chesky recognizes the reason we ask our friend a recommendation or proactively rave about restaurants and products we love: we want to make easy buying decisions based on information from a trusted source.

But who, or what, most people consider a trusted source is shifting.

Google’s model has always relied on backlinks to surface relevant content. The more a page is linked to, the more credible it’s assumed to be. But SEO turned into a pay-to-play game long ago, and now blogs are optimized for bots, not humans. “SEO is dead” is a phrase I’ve heard often recently.

Now, people are asking GPT for recommendations the way they used to search Google.

The power is shifting from websites to curators. LLMs act more like curators: they don’t just find information—they synthesize it, rank it, and suggest what’s most relevant in the moment.

That’s why conversation (with friends or AI) is becoming the new conversion. It’s not about who is publishing the best content, but who is making sense of it all.

Just ask Shopify, who’s betting on conversation-driven commerce. 👇

Here are six ways to adapt to this shift:

1. SEO is out, AIO is in. People are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI platforms the questions that they use to ask Google. That means it’s important that your website be AI-optimized.
   👉 Take action: Revisit your website’s content for AI optimization. Check out this article, published by a friend of mine, as a starting point.

2. Claim your space and your domain. Be the curator of ____, or bring people together around ____. It doesn’t have to be something massive, fancy, or time-consuming, and it especially should not be anxiety-inducing.

   👉 Take action: Pick one topic, theme, or interest you naturally gravitate toward and create a small weekly ritual around it: a newsletter, group chat, playlist, or post that brings others into that space.

3. Curation is the new creation. In a world of infinite content, the real skill is not producing more—it’s filtering better. People don’t want a million options; they want one trusted recommendation.

   👉 Take action: Curate with purpose. Your taste is the product.

4. Superconnectors are the new accelerators. They don’t just collect contacts—they compound them. Think of them as network engineers: they understand how value flows between people.

   👉 Take action: Track your introductions. Measure how many turn into outcomes (partnerships, clients, collaborations). FYI We do this for our clients!

5. LLMs can summarize, but they can’t sense. They can list “Top 10 Networking Tips,” but they can’t feel when two people will click.

   👉 Take action: Use AI to scan, synthesize, and surface, but rely on your intuition to connect.

6. Your curation is your reputation. Recommend wisely!

   👉 Take action: Make one recommendation per week—to your audience, your peers, or your clients—and watch how trust accumulates. If you don’t truly believe in something/someone, don’t recommend it.

A parting thought—

I’m working my way through the AI tools MasterClass founder and CEO David Rogier mentioned in this article and was intrigued by one of his recommendations: he specifically mentioned NotebookLM to synthesize all the contest he wants to digest. My challenge to you: could you take it a step further, curating what to synthesize, and then sharing it with people to provide value?

Talk soon,
Nicole

“But wait, there’s more!” 👇

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