Steem curator from my little experience and knowledge so far on the platform are individuals who are selected and appointed to perform certain duties mostly as a group.

To me me these are not just anybody or anyone, they are individuals who have not just been on the platform for a long time but they are have over time that they are serious, dedicated and hardworking on the platform by creating quality content, Engaging with other people content through meaningful conversation.

Their duties in the platform is not just to search for quality content or write ups but also to verify the accuracy and originality of the write up, that is if they are AI generated or it copied and pasted.

To illustrates, let's take the steemit platform to be a large room full of clothes all clean but of different grades. Now the duties of the curators is to pick out of those clothes, materials that are first grade so to speak and after that they appreciate these clothes by buying them(up voting) and by telling others about the quality of the material(resteeming).

Now with regards to curators with the tags like 01 and the rest, I think it has to do with levels and rank. These are highly ranked curators in the platform with a very high curating powers and influence.

Before you get an upvote from this group of curators that means that the write up must be of a high quality not just to a particular community but to the entire steemit platform as a whole.

As for me, my goal is to improve the quality of my content to the extent that I get the chance to be curated by this class of curators. I will to invite the following to Join me in this contest: @abijos, @skinnlyblack