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If you ask most working journalists what they think about Associated Content, Demand Media or AOL’s Seed, you may hear a scoffing sound.
After all, these sites, while providing some people with work, produce high-volume, low-cost content designed to appear at the top of search engine results, earning them the industrial-sounding moniker "content farms."
“If you want to know how our profession ends, look at Demand Media,” Jason Fry, a former WSJ.com reporter, wrote in a post on the blog Reinventing The Newsroom. They’re also contributing to declining rates for freelancers, critics like Roth say, making it harder to make a living. “This is the journalist as Chinese factory worker,” Fry added. “Except for a lot of rural Chinese, the factory is a step up.”
It doesn’t take more than a quick scan some of headlines to get an idea of what journalists think about them:
Are Content Farms "Demonic"? (ReadWriteWeb)
The Furor Over Content Farms (Reinventing The Newsroom)
AOL's Latest Dumb Business Plan (Slate)
But they’re also suddenly in-demand properties for Web portals shifting their approaches to content, looking to churn out more and more of it, targeted and on the cheap.
And that slab of the media world is hot. Last month, Yahoo recently acquired Associated Content for a reported $100 million. (AOL chief Tim Armstrong is reportedly an investor in Associated Content.) In early June, AOL – which owns its own content factory in Seed -- announced a pronounced shift in strategy that will involve the hiring of “hundreds” of journalists over the next 12 months. (Seed is still germinating – with reports that its back-end won’t be finished until late 2010.) And Demand, a company that produces more than 4,000 video clips and articles a day based on algorithms, is planning an initial public offering valued at about $1.5 billion.
"This a game-changer," Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said while announcing the Associated deal. "Together, we’ll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network. These are important aspects of building engaging consumer experiences on Yahoo!, and one of the reasons why we’re one of the most visited destinations online.”
According to Wired, Demand – launched in 2006 by Richard Rosenblatt -- generated more than $200 million in revenue in 2009, and was given a billion-dollar valuation by its list of blue-chip investors.
And there are rumors that Google – yes Google – may be interested in trying its giant hand at on-demand content. According to the Financial Times, the search giant recently filed a patent that “appears to replicate one part of what has made Demand’s approach to content so successful.”
But do these valuations give these “content farms” – and their business plans – validity in the eyes of their numerous critics?
“Does it legitimize their business models? Sure.
