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Crowdsourced Journalism

Demand Media is a content-provider start-up that has quickly become the web's least understood and most vilified juggernaut. The company has come up with a ruthlessly efficient way to churn out stories it knows will be profitable online. The topics may seem bizarre, but the method, though controversial, is unquestionably a success.

Demand Media runs a slew of popular internet portals, including eHow.com, Cracked.com and Livestrong.com that receive 100 million hits a month. The company, based in Santa Monica, is also directing an army of freelancers to write stories that appear in traditional media outlets. More deals with large off-line brands will be announced soon.

Demand Media has a horde of more than 7,000 freelancers. One person takes the algorithm's output and turns it into a headline; another writes the article and passes it on to a copy editor, who does fact-checking and fiddles with grammar. All told, it may take less than a day for a short article to get posted and start earning ad revenue.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1971409,00.html

Filed under: Crowdsourcing Internet Journalism Media
 

China's Human-flesh Search Engines

Human-flesh search engines have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It is crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online -- with offline results.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?pagewanted=print

Filed under: China Crowdsourcing Internet Search
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