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Google Declares War On Content Farms, What's Demand Media To Do?

from the the-markets-are-changing dept

Today we have a guest post from Chas Edwards, Chief Revenue Officer at Pixazza, who's been thinking quite a lot about various content-related business models lately, and wrote the following in response to the recent news of Google's algorithm change

Recently, Google announced changes to the PageRank algorithm that will affect nearly 12% of search results. According to their post at Google�s blog, Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal say the changes are �designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites � sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.�

Presumably this will have an enormous effect on content farms such as Demand Media and Yahoo�s Associated Content. So what�s a content farmer to do?

A few days ago I wrote a post expressing my hope that content farms might grow up into something useful and generally less sucky. Maybe I�ve been reading too many happy-ending fairytales to my daughters. But when I pull back from the actual content from Demand or Associated that makes its way to my search results (which is usually quite bad), I see a platform � and platforms, theoretically, are things on which you can build something lame or something good. If the content farmers help individuals with knowledge find questions (search queries) that need answers (topics too niche for large or mid-sized publishers to cover), it seems plausible that some individuals might create useful content.

My argument, though, misses at least two important points, which Glenn Fleishman and Jeff Jarvis helped me think through.

From BuzzMachine:

�Why do people write on Huffington Post? Because they can. Because they give a shit. Because they like the attention and conversation. Because they couldn�t before. Why do they sing their songs on YouTube? Same reasons.�

Jarvis�s argument is: When we�re doing work, we expect to get paid. When we�re doing something for the love of it, we�re motivated by passion and the opportunity to be heard. When we�re doing it for love, in other words, we often create value for free. Quality content is traded for distribution to an audience and for a chance be an authority.

In a Twitter exchange with Glenn Fleishman, he said �The more you spend, the better content you get, up to a point.� His site, Wi-Fi Net News, was one of the first 10 sites that teamed up with Federated Media back in 2005. So my question back to him was: �But what about WFNN in the early days when the money wasn�t great but the content was?�

Aha. It�s about ownership. Glenn is specifically referring to IP ownership (his words, his URL, his business), but there�s a different kind of ownership too � one that Jarvis is getting at. I�m willing to contribute (to the best of my abilities) good content, free of charge, to Twitter, Quora or the Huffington Post even though I don�t own the IP or the business. I�m willing to do that because I do get to own the authority. Those platforms publish my by-line, picture and bio, so if someone out there thinks I�m smart or funny, I own that goodness. I�m not making money, but I get credit. I work hard to create value because, if I�m successful, that content distributed on those platforms polishes my brand and my reputation.

Even if Demand Media keeps most of the money they�re making from their websites, they might dodge the Google bullet if they can improve content quality by giving their contributors a sense of ownership over what they create. And then they marry the handsome prince!

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In a week when Egypt went into a clinch over the new government’s intensions regarding human rights, freedom and higher pay, Libya erupted into what is, to all intents and purposes, a civil war and in Tunisia the body count continued to increase web trends everywhere laser focused on the same thing: Charlie Sheen.

The Oscars themselves became a footnote to the network TV star’s blitz on the media scene. Suddenly it has become impossible to not trip over his name. On daytime TV and endless chat shows reporters and celebrities pour over his every word, offer opinions, views and advice. Popular Radio shows like Howard Stern’s have held phone-in interviews, CNN’s Piers Morgan gave Sheen a full hour and ABC’s Andrea Canning interviewed him at his home and fuelled speculation over his lifestyle and domestic arrangements.

Sheen who had managed, through a public rant on Alex Jone’s Radio Show, to go from TV’s highest paid actor to unemployed has suddenly become the hottest property in the social media stakes. He topped Google trends on March 1st with millions of people across the United States and Europe looking for information on him and just two days later he clocked the fastest time ever to reach a million followers on Twitter. The Guinness Book of Records handed him the award after Sheen’s Twitter verified account (billed by him as ‘unemployed winner’) became the focus of the blogosphere and the real-time web topping the 1 million mark in 25 hours and 17 minutes. At the time of writing it has topped the 1.3 million mark.

With all these crazy numbers being thrown around the sane voice inside us just has to ask, why? Why are we suddenly so fascinated by a man who is not the greatest talent of his generation, whose inner demons, whatever they may be, are not unique, whose lifestyle, however questionable, is not exceptional in his line of work and whose willingness to participate in the media circus which usually surrounds celebrities is not that far removed from Madonna’s or Lady Gaga’s.

We are living in the era of ‘firsts’. It is the first global credit crunch we have ever experienced. Facebook and Twitter are real-time web ‘firsts’. For the first time we can find out news before the accredited news channels give them to us. For the first time institutions we help inviolable seem to have been built on clay. Charlie Sheen is the first celebrity to allow us unpackaged, raw access to his own personal view of the world. Add to it the fact that he gives us a voyeur’s view into the state of mind and lifestyle of a celebrity who’s unconventional even by celebrity standards and you suddenly have a novelty that’s as addictive as the drugs Charlie Sheen admits he used to take.

Continued on the next page


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