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Posts Tagged ‘Co Workers’

What It’s Like To Write For Demand Media: Low Pay But Lots of Freedom

Editor: This is a guest post by Andria Krewson, a freelance journalist who has written for Demand Media. Given our recent focus on Demand Media and so-called content farms, we thought it would be interesting to get a perspective from a Demand Media writer.

I made $37.50 at Demand Studios in November. That money went directly into my Paypal account, on time, with no billing hassles. But it probably took me about six hours of filling out a profile, studying a style guide and learning how to navigate the system. So my hourly pay was about $6, for a writer new to the system.

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Andria Krewson is a freelance journalist and consultant in Charlotte, N.C. She has worked at newspapers for 27 years, focusing on design and editing of community publications. She blogs for her neighborhood at Under Oak and covers changing culture at Crossroads Charlotte. Reach her on Twitter as @underoak.

I had heard about Demand Studios from former co-workers before Wired wrote about Demand Media (Demand Studio’s parent company) in October, and media pundits like Jay Rosen followed up with comments on Twitter and an interview with the company’s CEO at ReadWriteWeb. [Ed: ReadWriteWeb's first analysis of Demand Media was in August.] Demand Media has been criticized for producing low-quality content designed for search engine optimization. It’s not journalism, critics say, and it’s clogging up Google searches, making good stuff hard to find.

But I suspect much of that criticism has come from people who haven’t gone inside the Demand Studios part of Demand Media to see how it really works, or they haven’t thought enough about what kind of content it provides, or they haven’t thought enough about how it feels to swallow your pride and make a little money with your strongest knowledge and skills, no matter the global hourly rate.

There are differences between the user-generated content at sites Demand Media feeds, and the content generated by Demand Studios.

So let’s get to it.

How it works

People sign up as writers, editors or filmmakers. I signed up as a writer. Contributors study the style guide, which gives specifics on allowed citations, and why citations are needed, and how to write for search-engine optimization without sounding too clunky. New writers can also consult forums and connect with other contributors with social-networking tools. Writers can then use keywords, pay rates and general content areas to search through available assignments. Generally, enough assignments exist that writers can find subjects of personal interest.

Fact sheets get $7.50 an assignment. I fulfilled one of those before I realized that rate of pay wasn’t worth the effort. The next two assignments, for $15 each, both dealt with the same topic, with slightly different angles, and I chose them because I knew the subject well. Still, I had to do some research, to back up my statements and provide links to .edu or .gov sites. No Wikipedia allowed.

Once accepting assignments, I had a week to submit them to editors. While I could have written each piece without any research, citations and outbound links are required, as well as a summary (a nut graf, essentially, in newspaper terms). Frankly, the discipline of filling out boxes with words could help some professional writers improve the focus of their pieces. Certainly new writers can learn from the system. And the SEO tips in the style guide are worth study.

One piece I wrote was bounced back for further editing. The editor’s comments were gentle but clear. I made fixes, resubmitted, and got paid, through Paypal, no invoices necessary.

What’s the content?

The stories are usually how-to pieces, often broken into steps. They’re evergreen, designed to be as relevant in a year or two as they are now. They’re the kinds of questions I would usually get answered through a phone call to my contractor father, or my brother the car genius, or my mother the seamstress/cook/homemaker/gardener/early computer geek.

You can tell by the assignment headlines that they’re generated from search engine queries, and sometimes those search terms provide some amusement. People are actually turning to Google to ask these questions? What happened to asking basic questions from friends and family?

But indeed, we’re in a different world, and the criticism of Demand Media by some pundits strikes me as a bit elitist, as if the Internet weren’t for everyone. A personal example:

(Daughter, 19, volunteers to help me with my eye shadow for a special event.)

Me: Where’d you learn this technique?

Her: Youtube.

(And indeed, eHow videos, supplied by Demand Media, show how to apply eye shadow.)

Next page: Swallowing my pride

Facebook rolls out long-awaited privacy overhaul today

Facebook is revamping its privacy settings today, giving users more control over who sees what they publish every single time they share. The social network, now the world’s largest at 350 million users, announced these changes back in July.

They include a couple main points:

• Regional networks are being removed. Now that certain networks, which can revolve around entire countries, have grown to several million users, they’ve become essentially meaningless in terms of privacy. So Facebook is eliminating them, and allowing users to share information with friends, friends of friends or publicly.
• There’s a transition tool to help guide users through the changes. But the default settings will give extra privacy to sensitive information like phone numbers.
• There will be control for every single item a user publishes, whether they want to share that with only their family, their closest friends, work colleagues, all friends or everyone.
• There are special protections for minors. Even if they opt to share items with everyone, those items will only be shared with all of their friends.

You can read more about the changes here. Facebook’s privacy settings have long had a rather complicated user interface. Users could create friend lists but they’d have to add people one-by-one from a list that could include hundreds or thousands of people.

It was hard to tell what was visible to others — if a user shared a party picture, could their co-workers see it? Or their parents? Or everyone? That made sharing on Twitter rather simple by comparison. If a user shared an item, it was very clear that it went out to everyone. Ultimately, this move is about reasserting Facebook’s unique value as the only place where a user can control how narrowly or broadly they want to share their interests and life.

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FlightCaster Takes Off With $1.3 Million In Funding And A New API

It seems that flight delays could turn into a big business. FlightCaster, the startup that helps predict flight delays long before the airlines themselves usually do, has just landed a $1.3 million funding round led by Tandem Entrepreneurs and Sherpalo Ventures. FlightCaster previously recieved money as part of the Y Combinator program. Today the company is also launching a new API, which developers can learn about here.

FlightCaster’s goal is simple: it wants to let you know when your flight is delayed as early as possible. Using a variety of data sources and complex algorithms, the service will alert you whenever it thinks one of your flights will be delayed, along with an explantation of the factors that contributed to its prediction. And so far, it seems to be working — co-founder Jason Freedman says that four hours below takeoff, Flightcaster manages to predict ten times as many delays as the airlines do. And they manage to stay 90% accurate (which is on par with the airlines).

Back when I first wrote about the startup, I questioned how helpful knowing about a delay in advance really was. After all, FlightCaster’s notifications state that a flight will probably be delayed. But sometimes they’re not, so it isn’t wise to show up at the airport a few hours late. Freedman says the FlightCaster team had the same concerns, but that there are two discrete sets of users who value the service. The first group of users (which is where most people fall) just like having a heads up that their flight is delayed, mostly so that they can warn friends and co-workers that they might be late.

The second group loves FlightCaster for a different reason: they will change their plans if there’s a possibility of a delay. Freedman says these tend to be frequent fliers (likely business travelers) who don’t want to get caught in delay limbo and are willing to pay to swap flights even if a delay isn’t certain.

It’s this second group that will likely prove most valuable to FlightCaster. The company is currently in talks with a number of major travel sites (and even some airlines) to integrate their predictions. Freedman won’t get into specifics yet, but he says some of these partners are interested in helping frequent fliers rebook their flights as soon as there’s a delay alert.

Along with the parters FlightCaster is already talking with, other developers will be able to tap into the Flightcaster API for a fee.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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First Look: Minimalist time tracking on Mac using Minco

Filed under: Software, First Look, Snow Leopard

Mauritius is a minimalist island nation in the Indian Ocean, and from that tiny set of spots on the map comes a new Mac time-tracking application for anyone who needs to keep track of how much time they spend on tasks. Minco, now in public beta from Celmaro, is a minuscule Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard app that works with any application that supports iCal.

When Minco is launched, all you’ll see is a tiny clock icon in the menu bar. Clicking the icon opens a glossy transparent black display that shows either the time you’ve spent on a project or the revenue you’ve gained from doing billable work on that project. Clicking on the time or revenue counter starts the counter, which then disappears from view. When you stop the timer, a new calendar item is placed into iCal so that you can keep track of how your day was spent.

The iCal integration works the other way as well. Creating a To-Do item in iCal adds it to your Minco timer so that you can start tracking time. When you start up the timer, the iCal item shows up in your calendar with the phrase “…working” attached. Publishing that calendar could be used to show co-workers or clients what you’re currently working on.

If you want to keep a log of what you do during your work days, Minco also writes your time log to a standard .csv file that you can import into Numbers or Excel for analysis. The company is considering writing other export adapters, although the existing adapter is amazingly flexible.

Celmaro provides a 14-day free trial download, and the software is available for US$9.95. I found it very unusual for a company to be charging for beta software, but then again, Minco is much more stable and usable than a lot of beta software I’ve used.

TUAWFirst Look: Minimalist time tracking on Mac using Minco originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nine Startups Present To The DC Tech Community At TECH Cocktail

This post was written by Frank Gruber, who cofounded TECH cocktail, a startup that looks to help people involved with technology connect at events, which it throws around the country. Tonight’s event is being held in Washington DC, where nine startups are presenting to tech enthusiasts from throughout the region.

Though situated in the heart of Government 2.0, the private sector in Washington, D.C. has been a wellspring of new startups each quarter. TECH cocktail, a community building organization, looks to help entrepreneurs by giving them a place to share their latest creations with the local technology community. The first couple of TECH cocktail events in Chicago were covered here in July and October 2006. Since then, TECH cocktails have been guzzled down like dirty martinis quarterly in D.C. and Chicago and annually in Boulder, Boston and other smaller technology communities.

TECH cocktail D.C. 6 is being held tonight and is supported by local companies like AOL, which will be showing off the new AIM product with its real-time lifestream. AOL is joined by Boalt, TransFS, Jess3, iStrategyLabs and a handful of other local supporters who help make it possible for TECH cocktail to promote the startup scene.

The start-ups demoing will include the following:

AddyMate a free web service that helps you manage & communicate with all your contacts across various web services, social networks & computers from one central connected address book that self-updates when you or your contacts change your personal information. It also offers various privacy settings to help group together family, friends, co-workers & others.

CostToDrive or C2G is an application that uses a “galculator” to help people quickly and easily discover how much it costs to drive anywhere in the United States. You might want to check with CostToDrive before you gas up the family truckster for a Sunday drive. There is also a CostToDrive iPhone application coming soon.

CYNCZ pronounced “syncz”, is a subscription-based contact aggregator that consolidates and synchronizes all your contacts from multiple address books so that you can access them at any time, from any device.

Grasshopr is an online civic platform enabling organizations and individuals to connect, communicate, and take action on issues at the federal, state and local level. Grasshopr makes connecting with your elected officials only a click away. Elected officials can also use Grasshopr to build authentic, sustainable connections with their constituents, inviting them to a town hall meeting, or polling them on current issues. Grasshopr is a free service but premium services may be on the way soon.

Keen Guides is a platform for delivering download-able short-format audio, video and audio tours. Keen Guides has a very nice iPhone application that makes getting audio and video tours a breeze. Keen Guides was a 2009 LaunchBox Digital company.

LegalRiver is an online marketplace dedicated to helping lawyers and businesses connect. It is a free, anonymous and non-binding tool, empowering businesses to solicit, compare, review and retain the right lawyer for their legal need. Legal River was a 2009 LaunchBox Digital company.

Seizure Tracker helps manage and track seizure activity. Created by the parents of a son born with epilepsy, the tool is dedicated to providing patients and their doctors with free comprehensive tools to help understand relationships between seizure activity and anti-epileptic medications. SeizureTracker.com allow patients to create personalized reports of logged seizure activity and medication history that can be easily shared with their medical team.

TapMetrics is a Northern-California & Washington D.C.-based start up that provides mobile application analytics to developers for the iPhone and other mobile platforms. Their developer analytics are focused on creating tools for application architects to better understand their users, continually improve their applications, and help their businesses grow. This could be a very popular analytics toolkit going forward. TapMetrics was a 2009 LaunchBox Digital company.

Thankfulfor is a microblogging site created by Shiny Heart Ventures focused on gratitude. In just 140 characters, users can share what they are thankful for, saving each item to their personal “journal” of thanks. Users can also be social by choosing to send each Thankfulfor post to their social network on Twitter, spreading the good vibes far and wide. What are you thankful for?

If you cannot make the D.C. event, look for TECH cocktail Boston 3 on September 3rd or work with us to bring TECH cocktail to your local tech community.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Google’s Picasa Web Albums Are Now More Social Than Ever

Google just made its Picasa Web Albums a lot more social. While you could always share albums with others, you can now also invite other users to contribute photos to an album themselves. Currently, as Google rightly points out, if you go to an event and a number of people take pictures, they will end up on various different photo sharing services afterward. Now, you can just set up one album and everybody can contribute their photos to this one album.

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To contribute to an album, users have to be signed in with their Google Accounts. After that, they can just click on “Add Photos” and start uploading images through the browser interface. Photos from contributors will show that user’s name and they can rotate images, delete them, and add captions.

In order to choose contributors, Picasa lets you access your Google contacts and you can invite individual contacts or groups that you have already set up in Google Contacts (think: co-workers, family, etc.).

Sadly, you won’t be able to use the Picasa desktop software to upload images to these albums if you are an invited contributor – only the actual owner of the album can. Also, if you use Internet Explorer, you can only upload five photos at a time.

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Why Do You Tweet?

eMarketer reports that, according to the “Consumer Internet Barometer,” the majority of Twitter users (42%) use the service to communicate with their friends. About 29% use Twitter to update their status, 26% to find news, and 21% for work-related reasons. Oddly, only 0.3% said that they use Twitter for fun. Significantly more women use Twitter to keep in touch with friends than men (48.4% vs. 33.6%). Besides this, though, there is little difference between how men and women use the service. About half of the survey respondents were introduced to the service by a friend or family member, and a third heard about Twitter from a co-worker.

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Why People Use Twitter

When it comes to different age groups on the service, there are a number of clear differences. Users under 35 are more likely to use Twitter to keep in touch with their friends (43.8% vs. 39% for those over 35). These younger users are also significantly more likely to use Twitter to update their status (38% vs. 19%).

Interestingly, though, users over 35 are far more likely to use Twitter for work-related reasons (29%), and the older the user, the more likely they are to use Twitter for research. 16.2% of those over 55 report that they use Twitter for research purposes, while only 7% of respondents under 35 say that they use Twitter in this fashion.

These numbers clearly show that users under 35 are far more comfortable with the idea of publicly broadcasting their status, while older users tend to have a slightly more utilitarian approach to the service.

Who Do They Talk To?

When it comes to who people talk to on Twitter, women are significantly more likely to use the service to talk to their friends and family members. Almost 30% of all respondents also use the service to interact with celebrities – which is clearly a driving force in the mainstream adoption of the service. About 24% use it to talk to bloggers (you can find RWW here), 13% use it to talk to their employers and co-workers, and 11% use the service to interact with brands.

Why Do You Use Twitter and Who Do You Talk To?

Do you use Twitter more to keep in touch with friends and family, or to do research? And when you use it to talk to other users, who do you talk to? You can find our own poll just below this post (note: you can check more than one answer).

Why do you use Twitter?(surveys)

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