I live in Sofia, Bulgaria. I like mojitos, and have friends who like mojitos.. I like reading and sharing information, following people that can teach me new things that I can share with others, meeting new people and visiting new places. Social media and the internet are a hobby and a passion for me. It is a small world, getting smaller by the hour, minute, and second. I love being part of this new world so lets meet and share.
Picture Show: The Harvest
- Posted by: GOOD , Mathieu Young
- on October 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm
The ongoing battle between medical marijuana advocates and law enforcement has begotten some tricky legality, which has lead to all sorts of uncertainty regarding growth and distribution, and, ultimately, prosecution (or non-prosecution) of distributors. Meanwhile, in places like Northern California’s Mendocino County, it’s currently harvest season for marijuana growers. Last year at this time, the photographer Mathieu Young ventured up north to document, with neither judgment nor agenda, a mid-fall marijuana harvest. “On the one hand it seems like an illicit activity,” says Young. “But on the other hand, you have a bunch of people who are living off the land, which is beautiful.”
Google Dashboard: Now You Know What Google Knows About You
November 5th, 2009 | by Stan Schroeder
View comments14 Comments and 422 Reactions
There’s no two ways about it: if you use a lot of Google services, then Google knows a lot about you. Google has received a solid amount of criticism because of this, and they’ve decided to alleviate the issue by launching Privacy Dashboard; a one-stop-shop with all the information that Google knows about you and your online habits collected in one place.
Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail (
), Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut (
), YouTube (
), Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and others. It’s quite a scary list; personally, I’m using all of these, and I was quite interested to see what exactly I’ve told Google (
Google calls the “scale and level of detail of the Dashboard unprecedented,” but I was a bit disappointed. The dashboard is nothing more than a selected list of privacy-related settings from the services listed above. You can find some interesting tidbits of info about your various Google account that you may have forgotten. For example, you can see which calendars you’ve shared with other people. But all of this info was already available in the Calendar settings.
The Age of Mega Content Sites - Answers.com and Demand Media
Written by Richard MacManus / November 5, 2009 1:15 AM / 4 Comments
Two companies that produce massive quantities of new content every day, Answers.com and Demand Media, are rapidly moving up the list of top U.S. web properties, as measured by comScore. Answers.com has risen from #26 to #13 in just two months, and Demand Media has risen from #24 to #15 in the same time period. Answers.com has nearly 38 million pages of content on the Web so far; Demand Media produces 2000 new pieces of content a day.
Is the fact that these sites produce so much content, and are quickly gaining in popularity as a result, cause for concern about the future of the Web? Will it lead to the same uniformity and lowest common denominator content that afflicts the television industry?
In this post we take a closer look at how Answers.com is becoming so successful - and what this may mean for the Web. In a follow-up post, we will dive deeper into Demand Media's model, based on an interview I conducted with several Demand Media executives (including founder Richard Rosenblatt) at the Web 2.0 Summit in September.
Answers.com Rolling in Page Views, Money
Answers.com, which we reviewed in August, garnered 56.4 Million monthly unique visitors in the United States in September (83M worldwide). For context, that puts it on a similar level as CBS Interactive (#12 with 58M uniques in U.S.) and Apple (#11 with 60M). Demand Media, which we also reviewed in August, was close behind with 52.5M uniques in September.
Answers.com announced its Q3 2009 financial results today. It made $4.99 million in revenue in that quarter, including $1.9M in September alone. The Q3 09 result was an increase of 40% compared to $3.56 million in Q3 2008. Most of the 09 revenues were from WikiAnswers, which reported $3.42 million in Q3 2009 - an increase of 75% compared to $1.96 million in Q3 2008.
WikiAnswers is the main reason for Answers.com's popularity. It is a Q&A site driven by user-generated content. And it's growing fast. Bob Rosenschein, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Answers.com, left a comment on our earlier post saying that "the growth in our traffic is almost entirely from our WikiAnswers site."
In September, WikiAnswers garnered 46.3 million U.S. unique visitors and ReferenceAnswers 21.4 million U.S. unique visitors (note there is some crossover between the two sites, hence those numbers are greater than the unduplicated total of 56.4M).
Low-Cost Content Production On A Massive Scale
There are two interesting aspects to the success of Answers.com. Firstly, it has a huge number of pages on the Web now: 38 million as of today. Much of that is user-generated content, so very low cost.
Secondly, Answers.com's page view and financial success is almost entirely created off the back of Google. Indeed, Answers.com announced recently that it has renewed its Google Services Agreement - extending its access to Google AdSense for two more years. Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers.com, is quoted as saying that "we earn the vast majority of our ad revenue from Google's sponsored links."
Now consider the implications of this for the future of content on the Web. The recent rapid ascensions of Answers.com and Demand Media can only really lead to one conclusion: to succeed in the content business on the Web, you should pump out hundreds of pages of content every day - preferably thousands.
Now, this is nothing new. We've known for a long time that blog success is more easily gained (gamed?) by producing far more posts per day than any one person can read. This has led to many professional blogs competing with each other on how many posts they can put up every day - usually accompanied by a slide in quality.
As well as producing as much content as possible, Answers.com and Demand Media also have a low cost structure in common with blogs. But they are taking the 'quantity rules' approach to a whole new level. This is low-cost content production done on a huge scale.
Just how much content do these two sites have on the Web? There's an easy way to find out: search Google. Here is the amount of content each has, along with some other sites for comparison:
- wikipedia.org: 56,000,000
- answers.com: 37,700,000 (of which wiki.answers.com accounts for 34,100,000)
- nytimes.com: 13,200,000
- washingtonpost.com: 12,500,000
- ehow.com: 4,850,000 (this is Demand Media's lead site)
- huffingtonpost.com: 4,740,000
- mashable.com: 210,000
- techcrunch.com: 124,000
- readwriteweb.com: 37,700
Answers.com has nearly 38 million pages of content on the Web. Much of it is discovered via Google; and monetized via Google. Wikipedia still has more content, but it is a non-profit world encyclopedia. Answers.com is a commercial company, out to make money.
Demand Media is well behind Answers.com (and Wikipedia), but there's reason to believe it will ramp up fast. In August the company told us that it produces 2,000 pieces of content per day, across its network of sites. It also has a slick content production 'studio' system, which we will explore in our next post.
Interesting to note that Huffington Post is really the closest the blog world has to a player in this 'mega content' space - but then most of the site's content comes from aggregating it from other sites. Huffington Post has been criticized by the New York Times in particular for this practice.
A note on New York Times and Washington Post. Clearly they both have a lot of content too - but they also have a lot of well-paid staff. Answers.com and Demand Media are producing content at a fraction of the price NYT and WP pay for it.
The Age of Mega Content Sites - Where Is This Headed?
On the Web, traditionally success has been measured by page views. This isn't always the case - there's certainly a place for quality over quantity, a philosophy which we at ReadWriteWeb firmly believe in! But by and large, big page views usually means big revenue... or at least the promise of it (e.g. in Facebook's case).
Both Answers.com and Demand Media are onto a good thing. They have different approaches - Answers.com is largely user-generated content combined with Wikipedia and other sources; Demand Media has created a low-cost content factory, by employing thousands of freelancers.
Google is largely keeping both companies in business - it is the source of most of their traffic (because a lot of it is reference or resource content) and certainly in Answers.com's case it provides the bulk of its revenue.
I can't help but think that the rapid rise of these two companies may be bad news for the Web. If a small number of companies come to dominate a content market, usually blandness and lowest common denominator fare follows. The network television and radio markets in almost any country in the world is evidence of that. Likewise, if you search Google for a reference article and the first page of results is littered with Answers.com and Demand Media articles, is that crowding out the real topic experts?
Are these mega content sites a good or bad thing for the Web? Is quality taking too much of a back seat to quantity? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Posted inFeatures, NYT, New Media, Trends and tagged with
answerscom, demand media, new media
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Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Hi :-)Richard,
so Content is still King.
It's looks so easy, just let users generate lot of content and make sure that this content is correct SEO optimized, why it's anyway so difficult ...
Thank's for the interesting post.
with kind regards
Ortwin Oberhauser
feel free to follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/Oberhauser
@OberhauserPosted by: Ortwin
| November 5, 2009 1:46 AM
Great article. Thank you. My feeling is that if google continues down this path they will only have themselves to blame when they go from A- student to that kid that once showed so much promise. This is certainly google's tough challenge, continue to push trash, pick up the pennies and risk becoming irrelevant or ..?
Posted by: Maya | November 5, 2009 2:13 AM
These sites are pretty much the end stage of Google SEO evolution. Lots of small time folks were doing similar article based SEO operations and over time a couple have grown up to dominate the search results. They've carefully aligned themselves with Google's algorithm for ranking content. They will probably continue to evolve and dominate as long as Google continues to use it's ranking algorithm or until a new search engine takes over.
It echos the Soap Opera evolution where daytime TV dramas were sponsored by household goods companies. The model was so simple that sales revenue was ploughed back into more advertising in a virutous circle. Enventually one or two companies ended up dominating the space and carried on happily for years (and still do).
Posted by: Chris Paton
To these guys fooling Google is so easy it's like taking candy from a baby.
Google, get your act together, or else...
Posted by: hj | November 5, 2009 2:54 AM
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The Age of Mega Content Sites - Answers.com and Demand Media
Written by Richard MacManus / November 5, 2009 1:15 AM / 4 Comments
Is the fact that these sites produce so much content, and are quickly gaining in popularity as a result, cause for concern about the future of the Web? Will it lead to the same uniformity and lowest common denominator content that afflicts the television industry?
In this post we take a closer look at how Answers.com is becoming so successful - and what this may mean for the Web. In a follow-up post, we will dive deeper into Demand Media's model, based on an interview I conducted with several Demand Media executives (including founder Richard Rosenblatt) at the Web 2.0 Summit in September.
Answers.com Rolling in Page Views, Money
Answers.com, which we reviewed in August, garnered 56.4 Million monthly unique visitors in the United States in September (83M worldwide). For context, that puts it on a similar level as CBS Interactive (#12 with 58M uniques in U.S.) and Apple (#11 with 60M). Demand Media, which we also reviewed in August, was close behind with 52.5M uniques in September.
Answers.com announced its Q3 2009 financial results today. It made $4.99 million in revenue in that quarter, including $1.9M in September alone. The Q3 09 result was an increase of 40% compared to $3.56 million in Q3 2008. Most of the 09 revenues were from WikiAnswers, which reported $3.42 million in Q3 2009 - an increase of 75% compared to $1.96 million in Q3 2008.
WikiAnswers is the main reason for Answers.com's popularity. It is a Q&A site driven by user-generated content. And it's growing fast. Bob Rosenschein, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Answers.com, left a comment on our earlier post saying that "the growth in our traffic is almost entirely from our WikiAnswers site."
In September, WikiAnswers garnered 46.3 million U.S. unique visitors and ReferenceAnswers 21.4 million U.S. unique visitors (note there is some crossover between the two sites, hence those numbers are greater than the unduplicated total of 56.4M).
Low-Cost Content Production On A Massive Scale
There are two interesting aspects to the success of Answers.com. Firstly, it has a huge number of pages on the Web now: 38 million as of today. Much of that is user-generated content, so very low cost.
Secondly, Answers.com's page view and financial success is almost entirely created off the back of Google. Indeed, Answers.com announced recently that it has renewed its Google Services Agreement - extending its access to Google AdSense for two more years. Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers.com, is quoted as saying that "we earn the vast majority of our ad revenue from Google's sponsored links."
Now consider the implications of this for the future of content on the Web. The recent rapid ascensions of Answers.com and Demand Media can only really lead to one conclusion: to succeed in the content business on the Web, you should pump out hundreds of pages of content every day - preferably thousands.
Now, this is nothing new. We've known for a long time that blog success is more easily gained (gamed?) by producing far more posts per day than any one person can read. This has led to many professional blogs competing with each other on how many posts they can put up every day - usually accompanied by a slide in quality.
As well as producing as much content as possible, Answers.com and Demand Media also have a low cost structure in common with blogs. But they are taking the 'quantity rules' approach to a whole new level. This is low-cost content production done on a huge scale.
Just how much content do these two sites have on the Web? There's an easy way to find out: search Google. Here is the amount of content each has, along with some other sites for comparison:
- wikipedia.org: 56,000,000
- answers.com: 37,700,000 (of which wiki.answers.com accounts for 34,100,000)
- nytimes.com: 13,200,000
- washingtonpost.com: 12,500,000
- ehow.com: 4,850,000 (this is Demand Media's lead site)
- huffingtonpost.com: 4,740,000
- mashable.com: 210,000
- techcrunch.com: 124,000
- readwriteweb.com: 37,700
Answers.com has nearly 38 million pages of content on the Web. Much of it is discovered via Google; and monetized via Google. Wikipedia still has more content, but it is a non-profit world encyclopedia. Answers.com is a commercial company, out to make money.
Demand Media is well behind Answers.com (and Wikipedia), but there's reason to believe it will ramp up fast. In August the company told us that it produces 2,000 pieces of content per day, across its network of sites. It also has a slick content production 'studio' system, which we will explore in our next post.
Interesting to note that Huffington Post is really the closest the blog world has to a player in this 'mega content' space - but then most of the site's content comes from aggregating it from other sites. Huffington Post has been criticized by the New York Times in particular for this practice.
A note on New York Times and Washington Post. Clearly they both have a lot of content too - but they also have a lot of well-paid staff. Answers.com and Demand Media are producing content at a fraction of the price NYT and WP pay for it.
The Age of Mega Content Sites - Where Is This Headed?
On the Web, traditionally success has been measured by page views. This isn't always the case - there's certainly a place for quality over quantity, a philosophy which we at ReadWriteWeb firmly believe in! But by and large, big page views usually means big revenue... or at least the promise of it (e.g. in Facebook's case).
Both Answers.com and Demand Media are onto a good thing. They have different approaches - Answers.com is largely user-generated content combined with Wikipedia and other sources; Demand Media has created a low-cost content factory, by employing thousands of freelancers.
Google is largely keeping both companies in business - it is the source of most of their traffic (because a lot of it is reference or resource content) and certainly in Answers.com's case it provides the bulk of its revenue.
I can't help but think that the rapid rise of these two companies may be bad news for the Web. If a small number of companies come to dominate a content market, usually blandness and lowest common denominator fare follows. The network television and radio markets in almost any country in the world is evidence of that. Likewise, if you search Google for a reference article and the first page of results is littered with Answers.com and Demand Media articles, is that crowding out the real topic experts?
Are these mega content sites a good or bad thing for the Web? Is quality taking too much of a back seat to quantity? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Posted inFeatures, NYT, New Media, Trends and tagged with
answerscom, demand media, new media
Print This Digg Share
Related Entries
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Hi :-)Richard,
so Content is still King.
It's looks so easy, just let users generate lot of content and make sure that this content is correct SEO optimized, why it's anyway so difficult ...
Thank's for the interesting post.
with kind regards
Ortwin Oberhauser
feel free to follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/Oberhauser
@OberhauserPosted by: Ortwin
Great article. Thank you. My feeling is that if google continues down this path they will only have themselves to blame when they go from A- student to that kid that once showed so much promise. This is certainly google's tough challenge, continue to push trash, pick up the pennies and risk becoming irrelevant or ..?
These sites are pretty much the end stage of Google SEO evolution. Lots of small time folks were doing similar article based SEO operations and over time a couple have grown up to dominate the search results. They've carefully aligned themselves with Google's algorithm for ranking content. They will probably continue to evolve and dominate as long as Google continues to use it's ranking algorithm or until a new search engine takes over.
It echos the Soap Opera evolution where daytime TV dramas were sponsored by household goods companies. The model was so simple that sales revenue was ploughed back into more advertising in a virutous circle. Enventually one or two companies ended up dominating the space and carried on happily for years (and still do).
To these guys fooling Google is so easy it's like taking candy from a baby.
Google, get your act together, or else...
RWW SPONSORS
FOLLOW @RWW ON TWITTER
POPULAR TAGS
- iphone
- search
- microsoft
- mobile
- social media
- trends
- apple
- yahoo
- music
- video
- youtube
- myspace
- advertising
- amazon
- social networking
- firefox
- rss
- semantic web
- android
- friendfeed
- security
- social networks
- mobile web
- blogging
- privacy
- digg
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- data portability
- enterprise
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Early morning Chocolate Ski delight. It looks like a sweet day ahead. :)
If you are looking for good people to follow on twitter.
Great Chart from Ogilvy/IBM/SocMedia Today thanks to Chris Abraham who pointed it out on twitter.
