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Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

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Re: Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

#4
post #2

I think they see the "content mill penalty" writing on the wall and are pivoting to spamming YouTube in advance.

Hadn't considered that. Can you expand a bit? I'm really into YouTube and would love to hear your theories.

I think it is a little harder to spam YouTube (with content) than the web. On the web, you can just parse feeds/spin text. On Youtube, you have to upload things. According to the presentation, they built out studios and are recording videos at a fast pace (and they do have thousands of videos on their channel, all with a signature white negative space backdrop). It is totally possible to make bad videos, not denying that. But it's a bit harder to trick systems into thinking there's something there that's not/misdirect.

Not saying there aren't other places in the system to abuse stuff (On YouTube you can friend spam, Fave-spam, etc), but it's hard to do with content.

Were you thinking content spam?

Re: Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

#6
post #2

I think they see the "content mill penalty" writing on the wall and are pivoting to spamming YouTube in advance.

Hadn't considered that. Can you expand a bit? I'm really into YouTube and would love to hear your theories. I think it is a little harder to spam YouTube (with content) than the web. On the web, you can just parse feeds/spin text. On Youtube, you have to upload things. According to the presentation, they built out studios and are recording videos at a fast pace (and they do have thousands of videos on their channel,…

Instead of low-quality articles meant to get search traffic and AdSense revenue, these are low-quality videos meant to get search traffic and AdSense revenues. YouTube is the second largest search engine and also has a lot of space in Google SERPs.

It's also almost identical to Videojug, if you want to see how something like this plays out.

Re: Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

#7
post #2

I think they see the "content mill penalty" writing on the wall and are pivoting to spamming YouTube in advance.

The ads seem to be way down, maybe they are trying not to look like a content mill while there is a heap of Google attention on the issue.

Re: Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

#8
post #7
post #2

I think they see the "content mill penalty" writing on the wall and are pivoting to spamming YouTube in advance.

The ads seem to be way down, maybe they are trying not to look like a content mill while there is a heap of Google attention on the issue.

You are totally right about the ads being down. That's why it's so unfortunate/confusing that the how-to pages still feel cluttered. Visual clutter on sites like this are often just to make places for ads that "blend" in with content. But the new Mahalo has few ads.

As I wrote in my post: there are multiple sections of interesting information... presented in a disorienting manner.

I feel like the new learning mission is sincere, but am waiting for more tweaking.

Re: Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

#9
If Mahalo has been such a loved product with versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 why are they basically scrapping all of it and releasing a new product?

It must be hilarious being an investor and seeing entrepreneurs pitch so confidently with ideas and then the next week see them something almost entirely different and totally confident in that.

Oh right if you pivot it's okay.

Re: Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

#10
I think it's a really smart idea. How-to content is huge. Amateur videos of esoteric hobbies can get a quarter million page views in a couple months. I think the biggest risk they are running is trying to produce in super high volumes. I think this will lead to less compelling content. At first they can make it up in volume, but if they have success it will be relatively easy for domain experts to copy their approach and produce relatively fewer videos, tailored to the field, which will lead to higher CPMs.

The other big opportunity is using video as a gateway to ecommerce. QVC is the 2nd highest grossing tv station. There is definitely an opportunity to take this model to the web.

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