knowledge-markets - Alex Ko on Diigo

20 Dec 09

They appear to be overwhelmingly women, often with children, often English majors or journalism students, looking for a way to do what they love and make a little money at it.
Compare those demographics to Wikipedia: more than 80% male, more than 65% single, more than 85% without children, around 70% under the age of 30.
2 more annotations...
- the interface and the editing allow people with other expertise to share knowledge. I recommended the site to my father the contractor. It could be a good way for a retiree with a lifetime of knowledge to document life lessons for others.
- People with disabilities, or people who have to fit their work around children's schedules, or people between jobs have a place to earn some money, from their living rooms.

What It's Like To Write For Demand Media: Low Pay But Lots of Freedom

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demand-media knowledge-markets

much of that criticism has come from people who haven't gone inside the Demand Studios part of Demand Media to see how it really works
Frankly, the discipline of filling out boxes with words could help some professional writers improve the focus of their pieces.
Certainly new writers can learn from the system. And the SEO tips in the style guide are worth study.
1 more annotations...
- People are actually turning to Google to ask these questions? What happened to asking basic questions from friends and family?

19 Dec 09

Demand Media's Inside-Out Path to Clicks - BusinessWeek

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knowledge-markets demand-media human-based-computation

Richard Rosenblatt's latest social media venture finds out what consumers want and gives it to them
one serial entrepreneur seems to have found a successful model in an industry badly in need of one. Unfortunately for a lot of hardcore journalists, it may not be the one they envisioned when they were starting out as cub reporters.
9 more annotations...
- As the name of his new company implies, Rosenblatt has turned the traditional journalism model inside out. Instead of editors telling the reader what's important, Rosenblatt has created a media company that produces only what consumers want
- To make it all work, Rosenblatt uses proprietary software that culls search engines to determine the information people are most often requesting—say, on how to make a great margarita (an article Rosenblatt wrote himself).
- The sites are designed for the Internet user who typically bypasses traditional print media to get information through Web searches.
- Think of it as part Google, part Home and Garden
- "I started with my background in social networking, and this is the next iteration of that," says Rosenblatt. "The users tell us the content they want us to provide."
- What's so impressive about Rosenblatt's model (or scary, if you're a traditional journalist) is that it costs just about nothing to capture those readers. Demand Media pays writers $15 to write the article. It pays a copy editor $3.50. They have fact checkers, as well, to ensure the overall quality of the article. But reporters and editors really make their money by sharing the revenue from ads that Demand Media sells through third parties. Editors and reporters can make north of $3,000 a month, according to Demand Media. A video producer, who gets paid as much as $600 for a video, can make even more. One, who created a short video on how to build muscles, took home more than $106,000. Another earned $90,000 for a video on how to tango.
- "Richard is a thought leader," says Hollywood producer and entrepreneur Peter Guber. Guber is not an investor, but he knows Rosenblatt's business model well. "The best thing is that if an interested person likes one of those articles, he might pass it on to someone else. That word of mouth is reinventing media."
- A Fine Fit for Google
- Could this be the future of journalism? I'm sure Rosenblatt doesn't see Demand Media as the second coming of The Washington Post. But "it's an interesting new model," writes Geneva Overholser, director of the University of Southern California School of Journalism, in an e-mail. "It will no doubt affect journalism," she also points out, "but we can't protect journalism from innovations like this."

Demand Media Is a Page View Generating Machine - And it's Working

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knowledge-markets demand-media human-based-computation

One does have to admire the system that Demand Media has built up to create content at little expense, make it viral and monetize it. The company's rise up the comScore Top 50 shows that this strategy is paying off big time.

Jay Rosen Interviews Demand Media: Are Content Farms "Demonic"?

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knowledge-markets demand-media journalism marketing human-based-computation

Most media companies are trying hard to... boost the value of their online content until it matches the amount of money it costs to produce. But Rosenblatt thinks they have it exactly backward. Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it -- perhaps an impossible proposition -- the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value.
build an engine for what the world wants to know and share
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- We do this by connecting consumers with content that meets their specific interests and [offers] connections to people that share their passion
- We are focused on creating content that solves problems, answers questions, saves money, saves time, makes you laugh - content that improves people's lives in big and small ways. It's relevant and impactful to millions and millions of people every day. It must generally fit within the economic framework the Internet provides today. As those economics change so will we.
- We only make content that we think can be done responsibly and within our cost structure.
- And I wouldn't say we are even "search-led" any more. We are led by consumer demand. We are maniacally focused on giving users exactly what they want, where they want it. We have algorithms that tell us what search visitors want. And algorithms that tell us what YouTube visitors prefer. And we're working on new algorithms that tell us what social network users desire. And we're pretty sure the needs of mobile users will be different than all of the above - so we'll tune our approach for them too.
- Search is just where we started, because that's where most consumers started their information seeking experiences. But the world has changed a lot since we started Demand Media four years ago - and we're changing with it.
- Completely missing the point. We have significant editorial processes. Let me explain. How do we do this? We hire qualified professional writers, film-makers and copyeditors. Set clear editorial objectives and style guidelines for every piece. Require external sources with every submission. Copy edit what's been turned in. Fact-check it. Check it for plagiarism. Rate each piece so that writers get feedback. Provide education to improve the team members. Perform quality audits and take down content that doesn't meet current standards (thousands per month). Weed out content creators who aren't performing well or improving fast enough (we let go more than 100 creators per month). What's more like a sweatshop: someone's living room working their own hours or a typical newsroom?
- We respect journalists very much. We think they need to use technology to help them figure out what audiences want and how to get value from their content more effectively. And there are big opportunities for them to increase quality by removing inefficiencies in the process of content creation. We would love to partner with as many publishers and media outlets as we can
- Because we haven't figure out how to do it responsibly and profitably also, its completely saturated and highly competitive. Consumers already have more sources than they need.

15 Dec 09

Content farms v. curating farmers « BuzzMachine

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social-media knowledge-markets google search human-based-computation

using algorithms to assign content creation based on search and advertising demand and to minimize cost and maximize revenue
the challenge has always been how you find the cream. That’s where opportunities lie
15 more annotations...
- one using humans aided by algorithms, one using algorithms aided by humans; neither operated like a one-size-fits-all search engine
- I think we may see search fall as the sole or even key means of discovery and filtering of quality content. I see three rings of discovery today: search (Google); algorithms (see: Google News, Daylife); and humans (see: Twitter).
- algorithm-aided human writing will meet human-aided algorithmic curation; quality will rise.
- Demand’s key insight: that the public should assign the creators, including journalists. The public often knows what it wants to know.
- I learned this lesson when I consulted at About.com and saw how they monitor search queries to see where there are questions for which the don’t have answers. When that happens, they go write answers; Demand automates the process. Makes sense.
- This is not how we have operated in media: We decided which questions to answer because we asked them.
- Jay Rosen just started playing with this notion at ExplainThis.org, creating a platform for the public to ask reporters to report their questions. Demand and About are doing the same thing, only through search queries.
- Where appropriate, reversing the assignment pipe is a good idea.
- Demand is also creating a system they say will find the best writer for each assignment.
- Can’t news organizations learn and steal some lessons from Demand? What if you wanted to create a content asset — say, a complete travel guide — and you opened up the process and its discreet tasks to a marketplace of paid contributors, enabling you to do larger projects at lower cost than before?
- Wherever you see a problem, look for the opportunity.
- The next generation of content creation is here; deal with it. If you don’t like what Demand et al are doing, see the opportunity in it to surface quality content and to create competitive quality stars whose creations rise not just through algorithmic search cynicism but through human recommendation. Dig to the next layer.
- 11 community members contribute to each article by fulfilling the discreet functions Demand identified: writing, copy-editing, copy-chiefing, reviewing titles, managing topic pages, checking facts. That is done by freelancers. The staff directs, edits, curates, and manages them. The algorithm makes all this more effective as it tracks content and ad demand and writes headlines for pieces it says will get traffic and earn money. Editors are 1.5 times more effective in creating assignments that will generate traffic, Kydd said, but the algorithm is 4.9 times better than creators.
- Demand pays from $0 (with revenue sharing) to $100 per piece; it averages at $20. Copy editors make $2.50-$3 per piece, which works out to $15-20 an hour. He said these people like to wake up and know there’s work they can do—there are 100k assignments waiting for takers right now—while they wait for old, human editors to respond to pitches. He said they also like being paid twice a week. Kydd said Demand employed 4,500 creators (text and video) and 400 copy editors in the last 30 days.
- What amazed me most is that Demand uses its method not only for service content but for jokes at Cracked.com. Could an algorithm and social network replace Jay Leno? Easy.

Improving news with user-directed assignment desks - jeffsonderman

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knowledge-markets human-based-computation

Journalism is about asking and answering questions. So for journalism the “metaquestion” — the question underlying all other questions — is, what questions shall we ask?
Until now, that metaquestion was answered by an analog process. It leveraged no network or algorithm. It basically consisted of editors speculating what they think the public should know, and reporters talking to informed people. That was fine, for the time.

29 Nov 09

How Web 2.0 is changing the way we work Andrew McAfee - McKinsey Quarterly - Business Technology - Strategy

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human-based-computation knowledge-markets business innovation MIT

“emergent social software platforms”—highly visible environments with tools that evolve as people use them

24 Oct 09

The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell | Magazine

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social-media information-economy knowledge-markets youtube related human-based-computation marketing

To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.
The focus on LTV keeps Demand away from any kind of breaking news coverage or investigative work, neither of which tends to hold its value.
4 more annotations...
- a crowdsourced team of freelance “title proofers” turn the algorithm’s often awkward or nonsensical phrases into something people will understand: “How to make a church-pew breakfast nook,” for example, becomes “How to make a breakfast nook out of a church pew.” Approved headlines get fed into a password-protected section of Demand’s Web site called Demand Studios, where any Demand freelancer can see what jobs are available. It’s the online equivalent of day laborers waiting in front of Home Depot. Writers can typically select 10 articles at a time; videographers can hoard 40.
- It turned out that gut instinct and experience were less effective at predicting what readers and viewers wanted — and worse for the company — than a formula.
- You can take something that is thought of as a creative process and turn it into a manufacturing process.
- Online content is not worth very much. This may be a truism, but Rosenblatt has the hard, mathematical proof. It’s right there in black and white, in the Demand Media database — the lifetime value of every story, algorithmically derived, and very, very small. Most media companies are trying hard to increase those numbers, to boost the value of their online content until it matches the amount of money it costs to produce. But Rosenblatt thinks they have it exactly backward. Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it — perhaps an impossible proposition — the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value.