Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried. I've been writing a lot about so-called 'content farms' in recent months - companies like Demand Media and Answers.com which create thousands of pieces of content per day and are making a big impact on the Web.
Both of those two companies are now firmly inside the top 20 Web properties in the U.S., on a par with the likes of Apple and AOL. Big media, blogs and Google are all beginning to take notice. Chris Ahearn, President of Media at Thomson Reuters, recently published an article on how journalism can survive in the Internet age. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington also riffs on this theme, mentioning AOL's "Toyota Strategy of building thousand of niche content sites via the work of cast-offs from old media" and quoting a Wired piece on Demand Media from October. I started my analysis of Demand Media in this August post. In November I explored more about how Demand Media produces 4,000 pieces of content a day, based on an interview I did with the founders in September.
See also: ACLU Threatens Suit in Gay Web Site Filtering. Last December, when Andrew Emitt starting looking for college scholarships, he turned to his high school library, hoping to find Web sites that would guide him.
But the Tennessee 17-year-old is gay, and when he searched for organizations that might be friendly to LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) students, he hit a firewall. What he discovered is that 107 schools in Tennessee -- including his, Knoxville Central High School -- use software that can block Web sites catering to gay issues. Emitt couldn't find any education sites, but he could find those that promoted "reparative therapy," which promises to change homosexuals to heterosexuals. "I wasn't looking for anything sexual or inappropriate," said Emitt.
"I was looking for information about scholarships for LGBT students, and I couldn't get to it because of this software. "It wasn't anything for entertainment value. ACLU Threatens Lawsuit The ACLU sent an April 15 letter to members of the Tennessee Schools Cooperative: Dr. Does Twitter Have an ‘Excessive Use’ Policy? Aeropolowoman, a journalist who was live tweeting the Mumbai terror attacks from her home in Florida, says that Twitter disabled her direct messaging and @reply facility for an hour citing excessive use.
Can twitter temporarily shut you down for excessive use? Aeropolowoman, a journalist who was live tweeting the Mumbai terror attacks from her home in Florida, says that Twitter disabled her "direct messaging" and "@reply" facility for an hour citing "excessive use". ..during my 17-hour Mumbai tweeting session, Twitter shut me down twice (an hour each time) for my excessive use. I was unable to Direct Message or Reply to anyone anywhere!
Those two hours were critical during a disaster that was still fluid. She also reported the issue to Twitter support but it went unanswered. Her full account sent in response to my preview post on Mumbai Terror Attacks. At first, my sources were from witnesses at the scene, then I started getting pleas for help from guests in the Taj.