Yahoo announced today that it acquired Associated Content. The deal was supposedly for 100 million. So what is associated content - It is a huge web farm/content mill for text , video, image media created by a huge community of free lancers for as little as 100 dollars a day. While this is maybe a strategic move to counter AOL’s content assembly line initiative, I wonder how can another content site even though it is by the people ,for the people be so valuable.
‘According to Luke Beatty, Associated Content founder and president. “Combining our crowd sourced content with Yahoo!’s distribution, world class editorial team and online marketing leadership will accelerate our growth as we continue to leverage our best-of-breed platform to deliver high quality compelling content on more than 60,000 topics.”
For advertisers, this deal will expand Yahoo! into more topic areas and real-time content generation and give even more opportunities to engage groups of passionate consumers in ways they will find uniquely appealing to their interests and tastes. Having insight into user intent through its leading search products enables Yahoo! to identify topics important to advertisers and users. Associated Content also provides more opportunities for Yahoo! to partner and collaborate with publishers who can help the company shape the tremendous variety of content coming in, into something bespoke and even more engaging.’
The other theory behind the acquisition is Yahoo’s testy relationship with Demand Media – another content mill or web farm which operates on the same principles and is worth even more 200 million! Content mills are a perfect marriage of the long-tail business theory and the so-called link economy. Cover the table with bets on millions of articles, craftily chosen, and you make money on ads consumers go from search engines to your sites. Of course, one man’s getting rich is another man’s cluttered Internet.
On going to the site, I did not find the content of any standards as it is today in Yahoo. It almost reminded me of the bad tabloid web. Most of the writing was mediocre and I being a voracious reader of rags/tabloids at waiting rooms of various kinds consider myself to be a discerning critic of tabloid journalism!
On second thoughts, I have seen some brilliant user content on the Yahoo! Answers like "How come words that rhyme in English don't rhyme when they are said in other languages?" or ”How to be more mature to get a car” or “What are some rich last names” so maybe it is a marriage made in heaven!
‘According to Luke Beatty, Associated Content founder and president. “Combining our crowd sourced content with Yahoo!’s distribution, world class editorial team and online marketing leadership will accelerate our growth as we continue to leverage our best-of-breed platform to deliver high quality compelling content on more than 60,000 topics.”
For advertisers, this deal will expand Yahoo! into more topic areas and real-time content generation and give even more opportunities to engage groups of passionate consumers in ways they will find uniquely appealing to their interests and tastes. Having insight into user intent through its leading search products enables Yahoo! to identify topics important to advertisers and users. Associated Content also provides more opportunities for Yahoo! to partner and collaborate with publishers who can help the company shape the tremendous variety of content coming in, into something bespoke and even more engaging.’
The other theory behind the acquisition is Yahoo’s testy relationship with Demand Media – another content mill or web farm which operates on the same principles and is worth even more 200 million! Content mills are a perfect marriage of the long-tail business theory and the so-called link economy. Cover the table with bets on millions of articles, craftily chosen, and you make money on ads consumers go from search engines to your sites. Of course, one man’s getting rich is another man’s cluttered Internet.
On going to the site, I did not find the content of any standards as it is today in Yahoo. It almost reminded me of the bad tabloid web. Most of the writing was mediocre and I being a voracious reader of rags/tabloids at waiting rooms of various kinds consider myself to be a discerning critic of tabloid journalism!
On second thoughts, I have seen some brilliant user content on the Yahoo! Answers like "How come words that rhyme in English don't rhyme when they are said in other languages?" or ”How to be more mature to get a car” or “What are some rich last names” so maybe it is a marriage made in heaven!
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