DISQUS

Howard Owens · 1 year ago

I think because A) the bonus program is aimed at single posts, rather than aggregate results; and, B) has pretty substantial PV numbers before bonus kicks in ... that the system has little danger of rewarding salacious, etc. posts.

The posts will need to be good content to get the kind of attention that will drive links and traffic -- mere good SEO won't drive that kind of traffic.

Robert Scoble · 1 year ago

Absolutely correct. I did six videos about the Amazon Kindle. Which one got all the traffic? The one where I was an asshat, of course!

So, if I worked for Denton I'd do nothing but Asshat videos.

Hint: that doesn't bring traffic (or relationships) that companies, er advertisers, value.

Sprague D · 1 year ago

Scoble's onto something -- the real story here is not just that Denton wants to increase his margins even more (after running the numbers I have all new sympathy for his writers), but that they don't seem to be able to make quality *audiences* pay out. The memo berates quantity of posts but sings the praises of (undifferentiated?) quantity of audience pageviews?

How long before the writers are replaced completely by user-generated content that involves no overhead at all?

Matt Bowman · 1 year ago

Page views are becoming a red herring - If you attract gawkers with sex and slapstick, you get poor ad targeting (unless you're selling sex or slapstick).

Lead generation is the real value. Advertisers will increasingly look for demographic-specific audiences.

That's why whoever creates the best blog-network software will win. If you can aggregate bloggers in a given niche, make it an open network, make the homepage a well-edited media site, you get lead generation.

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

By focusing on quality of posts, I assume that Vallewag is following the same trend that I've seen a few key bloggers (i.e. Skellie, Leo Babauta) mention in 2007: fewer high quality posts (with high value for the reader) are better than plenty of mediocre posts: more like a "sniper" effect than a machine-gun or shotgun effect.

How do you build a quality-detection algorithm, I wonder? It's somewhat subjective, isn't it?

Joe Duck · 1 year ago

Great observations here, and agree that this bring "more" of both the crap and the good stuff, though I don't agree that "quality" is measurable. One person's quality is another person's assclown BS crappy worthless drivel. Even many thoughful folks are going to click on a Perez Hilton "Britney drops Baby" before they click on a brilliantly reported story titled "Musharraf outlines nuclear plans". Why? We (humans) are defective in this respect, and that probably won't change until the singularity.

Stephen Downes · 1 year ago

What makes the web great is that we see things like Miss North Carolina. It is a reality we need to see and want to see. But there isn't a content filter in the world that would ever pick that set of inane utterances to pass through to readers.

No content filter, of course, except network television, which produces that level of 'quality' on a regular basis.

What was that about getting paid and producing quality work again?

Darryl Siry · 1 year ago

Pay per post has a secondary effect of having a single post on a subject get picked up by a host of other bloggers who don't question the veracity or source of the original post and are just rushing to get a post out on what looks like news. The result, unfortunately, is a mushrooming "telephone" effect where the facts become progressively more blurred and, combined with the "asshat" effect Scoble describes, progressively more bombastic. Unfortunately, this is a predictable outcome of the pay per post incentive system. The net effect is lower quality content.

Lucas Grindley · 1 year ago

It seems everyone on here lives in a world without editors. The only people rewarded in these plans for huge page views are the reporters. And in traditional worlds, all of those reporters have editors, whose job it is to filter out the onslaught of sensationalist crap you doomsdayers predict.

Even at Gawker there are site leads who Denton says (if you read the memo) can strike the page view bonus from any post they deem inappropriate.

And since when are reporters in this business for the money? It's going to take a bit more for all of them to just drop their principles.

I'm a big supporter of the plan and have been for a while.

Jim Kukral · 1 year ago

We're talking about Valleywag here right? It's not like this is in-depth thoughtful content, right?

Now, try this on a site with some integrity, and no, it's probably not going to work.

Jon Henshaw · 1 year ago

I've found that quality content performs as well or better than sheer quantity. The trick is "digestibility." Readers – including sophisticated online readers – crave quality, but they also crave their time. Readers want a quick synopsis of a story, similar to the bullets on CNN and the teasers on AlterNet articles. Then they want a well researched and structured article that includes sub-headers and bulleted lists. At the end of the article, include references and resources with links.

Most readers know quality content when they read it and they crave it. Change (tweak) how you deliver quality content and I believe that people will both follow and refer other people to it.

M · 1 year ago

I think a policy change like this can also mean that mroe bloggers will have to hustle to make more connections, network, sell themselves outside their online contributions. I know a lot of bloggers focus as much on relationships with real people who can swap links or just help sell the blogger. I don't know whether that's good or bad for content. Or whether that's fair to other bloggers who may not have the personalities to network with real, live people.

Jonathan Mendez · 1 year ago

The problem is the metrics being used to define success. Number of posts? Page Views? These are not metrics built to last in publishing 2.0 let alone 3.0.

One we start to look at outcome based metrics to quantify and redefine what success means to advertisers this all gets sorted out.

Goto Ao · 1 year ago

Scott Karp states the following at the end of his piece:

"What the web lacks most right now is a content filter that adheres consistently to a high standard of quality. If their were such a content aggregation system, it might be possible to significantly improve the quality of content on the web with pay-for-performance systems."

What Mr. Karp apparently does not know (or chooses not to know)is that such a "content filter" (or rather and more properly an "information utility") with the quality of Web content that Scott rightly wants, is here and available now and has been here for almost a decade layered across the public Internet in the form if "Interchangeable Master Channels" (IMCs) that are basically a private commercial Internet with a built in "filter" called a quality driven marketplace.

Scott was offered access (does he not now remember this?) many months ago to the IMC network whch has more than 700 dedicated IMCs in the dot-com name space that (a) bypass ICANN for practical purposes and b) can acommodate almost every conceivable brand name product or service, where the brand name sponsors then become the enablers for the "high standard of quality" criterion for content aggregation that Scott evidently (and rightly) wants to achieve.

And, not incidentally, the network absolutely protects the PRIVACY of every single person who intends to receive such content on any consistent basis (RSS and so forth), the latter about which Scott has also written.

Nor is Scott the only person who has access to the network. Anybody can access the network. It appears to be the case that persons like Scott who really are rather knowledgeable about such things, sometimes fail to see the forest for the trees - perhaps because they are not the ones who actually invent the solutions about which they now complain are unavailable?

All Scott has to do is ask and his really rather meritorious and above-mentioned complaint about quality filtering is, for practical purposes, alleviated.

I'm not saying that the EXISTING network is perfect, but the original concept which contemplated a UNIFORM AND COHERENT NETWORK with 700 plus dedicated channels in the dot-com name space was and is sufficient to accommodate all content considered worthy by in all probability any brand name sponsor anywhere in the word that wants to sponsor quality content.

Think of it as a Web-based PBS, with the difference bring that content creators work with their sponsors while the network itself is laissez faire in the sense that it anables connectivity in the rott zone but otherwise totally "hands off".

Sure, content filtering raises questions about who decides what is the quality criterion that triggers the filter. The best I could come up with in the original design was the marketplace. Sleazy and meritless content presumably would not easily find sponsorship - as if, for example, I wanted to program a Howard Sern nudity festival on PBS and tried to find a sponsor.

I admire Scott very much. And I also think his would an excellent voice to have present in the management of the network. Nonetheless, I do think on this occasion that Scott protests too much.

Jeff · 1 year ago

Freelancers who win cover stories for print magazines don't automatically have an advantage over paid staffers. An editor decides what's worthy and puts his/her neck out to fight for great work deemed so. Lazy or indifferent staffers can be scooped at their own publications. I've seen it firsthand.

How can clicks and links provide a meaningful metric for quality web content? They encourage manipulation for the sake of circulation and ad revenue.

Measure the length of visitor stays. Measure the quality of visitor paths. Analyze who among your contributors is most read. Measure ad click-throughs (novel concept). Then factor in raw visits and figure out pay.

What's the difference between a 5-second web visit and a 5-minute web visit? A video rant? A compelling post that breaks news? A headline written purely to grab attention for a moment? Tough dilemma. But the editor shares in the burden. Temptation is to go for the easy way. I can't see that as a long-term business model.

Responsibility, respect and trust are part of publishing -- no matter where. You have to consider the people who produce the work, the customers who read it, and the advertisers trying to sell amidst it.

Jeremy Brosowsky · 1 year ago

Scott, as you note, “[w]hat the web lacks most right now is a content filter that adheres consistently to a high standard of quality.” I think that’s absolutely right. Fundamentally, it’s why we’re building Brijit. But we don’t believe paying your writers based on traffic is the way ensure quality. Combining the best aspects of algorithm, user-generated content and traditional editorial control allows us to control for quality. Pay-for-traffic, more often than not, is a race to the bottom.

More here: http://brijit.wordpress.com/