
I Worked on the AOL Content Farm & It Changed My Life - dfj225
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/i_worked_on_the_aol_content_farm_it_changed_my_lif.php
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randall
I was also at AOL in the early Weblogs, Inc. days. While we didn't look at
ourselves as content farmers the same way you'd look at demand media, I
definitely think the $4/post model has it's benefits. For me, it was an
incentive to go through a large body of work fairly quickly. Thanks to my work
at Engadget too, I was able to get a crash course in technology journalism
from the master (Peter Rojas).

I often think of Weblogs, Inc. as a sort of freak of startup nature. Very
little funding, but the company had a huge impact, especially on its acquirer.
AOL's core publishing technology platform is Blogsmith, Weblogs, Inc.'s home
grown CMS, not to mention how Engadget, Autoblog and other influential
Weblogs, Inc. blogs have given other AOLers insight into what good content
looks like.

As Marshall mentions in the post, I'm wondering where the new minor leagues
are. I'd guess just being a regular contributor to Hacker News might be as
close as there is right now.

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jlees
Another ex-Weblogs Inc here (hi, Randall!)

It was the pile em up and sell em cheap model that burnt me out in the end. I
genuinely spent a lot of time early on writing quality posts, getting breaking
news (because I was in the UK and so awake earlier) and doing in depth
analysis type articles. Then I got fed up of the pressure to constantly keep
churning stuff out, and one day I looked at the crap I was writing and quit.
There were tricks you could do to pump up your post quota - I remember
starting WoW.com's Breakfast Topic as one such vehicle, though it was also an
interesting conversation starter.

Still, I am very glad I did it. I learnt a lot about the gaming and tech
industries and got a start in journalism as a result. Which I moved away from,
but that was my choice.

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aresant
tl;dr :

Marshall Kirkpatrick editor Mashable got his start at a content farm while
working at a convenience store.

Then got hired by TechCrunch after his stories got lots of traction.

Then got hired as editor of RRW after TechCrunch.

He sees AOL's content strategy creating a similarly powerful platform for
great writers to rise from the depths to the top.

Kind of an interesting counter point to current criticisms that AOL is only
going to produce "quantity over quality..."

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lwhi
Also, RRW is looking for a writer (in some ways I think this reads like a job
advertisement).

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jjcm
Again this drives home a solid point that even if you're doing mechanical-
turk-esque labor, if you strive to be the best in your field you'll get
noticed. Content farms are, as he said, the minor leagues for a bigger tech
writing gig.

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jodrellblank
No, it drives home the point of selection bias. Someone who got noticed tells
us he worked hard, we don't hear from the rest of the people.

It says nothing about whether people who work hard get noticed, or about
whether if you work hard you will get noticed.

(Actually, not even that, he tells us he went to a conference and was hired by
someone he schmoozed with!)

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robryan
Either way your probably going to need a body of solid past work at the volume
that the bigger players are after if you want to work there. I guess you can
either go this route and make some small time money, or try and build your own
blog following.

Of course there will be outliers who get into the good blogging jobs easier,
but as he says they expect 5 quality posts a day at RRW, many probably aren't
cut out for that and it's probably hard to assess without past work.

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binarymax
There was a great article in the new yorker a couple weeks ago about the
current CEO of AOL and how he is building the largest team of journalists in
the country (and possibly world). don't have it on hand at the moment but it
was a great read.

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pbhjpbhj
>the current CEO of AOL and how he is building the largest team of journalists
in the country

Journalists or people who right copy?

I'm sure someone will level a "no true Scotsman" objection at me but still ...

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pibefision
is there a way to download the document? pdf?

~~~
Umalu
Here is a link to it: <http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way#-1>

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MediaBehavior
That is _not_ a link to a pdf - but to a slideshow (for which I could find
nothing like a print/DL button.

But no great loss: it's 58 slide. Maybe it's just me, but I found that it
"ain't no SJ keynote."

