Will Personal Brands Survive The Content Farms?

Technology and demand content platforms are moving toward content farms, which will fight a negative connotation for a period of time before they’re identified as a necessary evil of journalism economics.

One content farm platform, SEED, has caught the eye of the digital media industry.

SEED assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL’s properties: more than 80 of the Web’s most highly trafficked and respected websites, including the world’s leading sites for music, style, TV, tech and more.

AOL’s Seed continues the pitch to entrepreneurial journalists, “We’ve got connections. Talent needs a place to thrive. And our property network of some of the world’s most entertaining and well-trafficked web sites gives you an unparalleled opportunity to distribute your work and make that happen like never before.”

“At SEED, we are committed to enabling talented, professional writers, photographers, and content creators to produce quality content. SEED Academy represents our intention to meet that commitment, with our team of experienced editors offering you tools and insights to take your writing to new heights. If our goal is to help SEED grow, then think of the Academy as the greenhouse where we can nurture our writing community and watch good ideas take root.”

The opportunity for exposure is fantastic. SEED is, in effect, a tool for the common person to have visibility into search engine optimization.

The bigger picture is a Internet filled with content people actually care about. SEED could be a major influence in the war against spam.

Digital media publishers clearly win with these economies of scale but do contributors?

Is there a long term path for the freelance contributors that sow the profits of the next generation AOL?

A World of Freelancers

Thomas Friedman recently opined on how “the great recession and great inflection are making our companies ultralean, innovative and productive.”

He describes “the Great Inflection (as) the mass diffusion of low-cost, high-powered innovation technologies — from hand-held computers to Web sites that offer any imaginable service — plus cheap connectivity. They are transforming how business is done. The Great Recession you know.”

After relaying an example of the intersection of great recession and reflection, Friedman summarizes “by being able to access all these cheap tools, Greer got to focus on his value-add: imagination. The customer got a better product for less money. But he didn’t create many new jobs.”

If you’ve been following the news on content farms you may have already made the same connection I did… In order to achieve scale in a world of limited credit and fierce demand production must be derived at the most extreme efficiencies.

This means paring down staff to bare bones and producing goods and services to satisfy current revenue opportunities.  Entrepreneurs and small business will have a greater opportunity to innovate and steal market share but where does the money come from to fund these ventures?

Will the VC / Angel Investor see a new dawn in the 2010s?

Read more about content farms by clicking the link below: http://bit.ly/4S1aog

Note the content farm used to generate a series of article links to this trend in demand content.