Neal's Notes

The vernacular often used is ‘content farm’ – briefly defined by Richard MacManus, as “a simple formula for success on the Web: create a ton of niche, mostly uninspired content targeted to search engines, then make it viral through social software and make lots of money through ads.”

This formula won’t hasten the demise of journalists but it’s definitely changing the profession’s business model. There’s now a proliferation of these companies offering gobs of quickly produced, made-to-order content.

One of these, Demand Media, has an army of more than 7,000 freelancers and churns out thousands of stories and videos each day. Demand Media uses proprietary algorithms to analyze search keywords; story topics are then generated based on what pops up. Although contributors get a byline, remuneration is minimal – about $15-30 for each article.

Two key competitors include Associated Content, which calls itself, ‘The People’s Media Company™,’ and AOL Seed. Associated Content states it has a community of 350,000 contributors and access to a library of more than two million syndicate-able pieces of content. AOL Seed assigns, purchases and distributes content for all of AOL’s properties.

News industry analyst Ken Doctor recently told PR Week that this business model could ultimately threaten traditional media.

“It’s establishing that content can be gauged per unit, as opposed to a whole package of a paper or magazine,” Doctor said. He expects that by 2013, traditional news syndicates could be using these metrics to measure content.

Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey also quipped that “perhaps consumers don’t care as much about quality content as editors traditionally thought.”

And for PR practitioners, they too will have to adapt. Jake Wengroff, global director of corporate communications for Frost & Sullivan, told PR Week that “with Demand using thousands of freelancers, where would PR people even start their pitch? As far as traditional media relations, there’s no obvious role.”