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AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

thefastertimes.com

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Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

#111

Post by ChuckFrank »

ChuckFrank wrote: post #36

Creating content online is NOT a viable business model. Recent history is littered with new content creators, and they've failed. The viable business model is either to host other content - YouTube, Hulu, Pandora, GrooveShark, Earbits, etc - Or to create content that is agnostic as to their use - Hollywood Studios, NY Publishers, Music Labels. - So either AOL should transition to a creator, or transition to a online…

Having thought of the best multiple channel content creator, I've come up with Disney. Disney makes everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Disney

Anyone have a better example, or of the elusive single online content creator? (Like AOL tired / is trying to be). We have penny arcade as the leading example. http://www.penny-arcade.com/ and since I had never heard of them before this, I am skeptical, but I'm checking them out.

Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

#112

Post by corin_ »

ChuckFrank wrote: post #110
corin_ wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a small company that runs content sites, profitably

Sure there will be small content companies in all mediums, but you can't be a big single media content creator. You need to create other revenue venues over multiple channels. Besides, instead of just telling us, show us ... what site do you work for?

http://www.heavenmedia.com - 1.5 million monthly unique readers and 20m page views, employee number in low double digits.

  you can't be a big single media content creator
Why not? I see no reason it can't be scaled up, and we've scaled up by purchasing several websites in the past couple of years (from small to slightly less small). Sure, the bigger you get the harder it is, because there's more work creating the content, and more work monetising it, and more opportunities for making mistakes. But it's certainly doable.

Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

#113

Post by knowtheory »

hugh3 wrote: post #38
ChuckFrank wrote: post #36

Creating content online is NOT a viable business model. Recent history is littered with new content creators, and they've failed. The viable business model is either to host other content - YouTube, Hulu, Pandora, GrooveShark, Earbits, etc - Or to create content that is agnostic as to their use - Hollywood Studios, NY Publishers, Music Labels. - So either AOL should transition to a creator, or transition to a online…

Plenty of folks are making money by creating and serving content online.

Jonathan Coulton, The Guild, Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog, Talking Points Memo... i mean, there is a list of these people.

Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

#114

Post by knowtheory »

hugh3 wrote: post #37
jerf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously a straight-up Markov Chain generator isn't going to work, but a smarter system that would allow you to basically sketch the article and then have the system automatically babble in English to fill out the word count while not actually needing any additional information strikes me as feasible, though not trivial. Somebody's doing something similar for sports reporting: http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/04/18/…

The Motley Fool also uses automatically-generated articles. For instance if you google the phrase "Being able to retire rich, or at least comfortable, is the goal of almost any investor" you'll find hundreds of articles from fool.com, each posing as an analysis of a particular company, and all generated with an algorithm which is fairly obvious after reading a couple of 'em. They're not completely worthless, though.…

My first reaction was disbelief, "what? the Motley Fool doing something that is clearly unethical?" Then i googled as you mentioned, and indeed found all of these identically phrased articles.

But upon reading them i'm impressed at exactly how generic this template is. I'm not sure they're actually doing harm, because frankly, these articles aren't analysis. They don't actually offer any judgement about the stocks in question. They're basically a textual presentation of some stock data that is designed to serve as a feeder into fool.com.

I can't say that i'm okay with it, but it's not as catastrophic as i had initially imagined. Still definitely SEO spam though :\ I am disappoint.

Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

#117

Post by jeffreymcmanus »

chopsueyar wrote: post #23
jeffreymcmanus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the case that contractors are guaranteed copyright to their work; in fact, the opposite is more common. The issue of copyright doesn't come up in the IRS criteria for contractor vs. employee.

It's not the case that contractors are guaranteed copyright to their work; in fact, the opposite is more common. It is in the constitution, actually, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" The issue of copyright doesn't come up in the IRS criteria for contractor vs. employee. No, but…

Not quite. The constitution doesn't stipulate the relationship between contractors. The part of the constitution that you've cited establishes copyright as a concept. It doesn't denote that every work you create is automatically owned by you. While it is true that works you create on your own time are by default protected by copyright, you can also enter into work-for-hire and other intellectual property agreements that alter the status of what you create.

Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

#118

Post by beambot »

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #25

“Do you guys even CARE what I write? Does it make any difference if it’s good or bad?” I said. “Not really,” was the reply. If he had any programming background, he missed a golden opportunity to write a markov text generator which would have let him meet his deadlines without the stress.

Ha! Reminds me of the Automatic CS Paper Generator [1] from MIT.

[1] http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out

#119

Post by earbitscom »

thyrsus wrote: post #97
earbitscom wrote: post #81

I am a huge supporter of creatives and artists. That being said, I have only partial sympathy for this guy. Work is work and we all need it, particularly creatives, but when you take a job writing about things you don't know anything about, you can't complain that you're being asked to do so. If he hadn't seen the most popular shows on television, he took a job he wasn't qualified for. That's fine, but then, he could…

I inferred that he was being asked to write about 16 (one article every half hour for eight hours) specific show episodes for a deadline about 12 hours after they aired; even with a Tivo, how would you both watch and write?

I believe he said it was fewer articles (something like 10), but what I'm referring to is his comment about having never seen many of the shows. The minute you take a job writing about television, you get started familiarizing yourself with the most popular shows. When you're assigned to a new show, you watch one or two episodes. If you're covering some more often than others, you put that one on while you fold your laundry. It's not as if he has a job reviewing tourist locations. Point is, you become an expert and suck it up. Particularly in a field this competitive, you spend time outside of the actual writing getting up to speed. To suggest that's too much to ask lacks a certain professionalism.
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