ASSOCIATE CONTENT IS IT A NEW PARADIGM FOR ONLINE JOURNALISM or just a way to hog up bloggers content? 
Take a peek at www.associatedcontent.com To be honest, this blogger Joyce Schwarz, author, consultant, emerging media was just surfing around the web on Saturday, November 26, looking for what was new and saw several references to a new venture by Craig's List that promises to change Journalism, like Craig's list supposedly has done for local advertising/marketing. WHAT WE FOUND -- several references to the new Craig's List project but no specific signs of it YET.
NEW VENTURE IN PUBLISHING...but what we did find was this: ASSOCIATED CONTENT -- a new venture that seems to promise to monetize your content based on how much traffic you send to read your content on their site or how many times people email your content to each other. Kind of an MLM (Multi-level marketing) venture for content. And a somewhat complex rating system along with lots of Google ads. Here are more details:
HOME PAGE FOR ASSOCIATEDCONTENT.COM AS OF NOVEMBER 26, 2005....hottest topics and email feeds are rated and split ad monies according to site & PR.
UNDER THE OUR COMPANY SECTION : Associated Content says it is "reinventing the way individuals and enterprises publish content. We are doing so by developing proprietary Publishing Platform and organically building a collection of multi-media Content Producers that add to Our Content library. Take a look at Our Content and our Content Producers. Both test Our Publishing Platform.
Under the headline: Our Publishing System
Associated Content sayt it is developing next generation online Publishing System. Our Publishing System allows for various types of content (text, photos, video, voice, etc.) to be published in a way that allows it to be discovered by search engines, easily used, and engineered to work with today's powerful adservers.
BOARD MEMBERS: Associate Content board members impressive group of movers and shakers ...including Tim Armstsrong, director, who presides over GOOGLE -- YES GOOGLE's North American Advertising sales and operations teams. President Luke Beatty who is listed as the founder of Associated Content and serves as Director of Corporate Development for Wand Inc., Director, Ron Conway, founding partner Angel Investors LP (Google, Ask Jeeves, Brightmail, Red Envelope etc) and Director Rich LeFurgy, founding chairman of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), venture partner at Walden VC etc.
Now the question we have is do the writers really get paid or do they just send in free content so that Associated Content becomes basically a paid search engine for content. Right now it looks like the site's sources of income are Google ads -- but what could one expect since it appears to have some kind of relationshp with Google. Now it gives this blogger Joyce Schwarz a great way to a) monetize her blog Hollywood2020 (http://www.hollywood2020.blogs.com) individual posts -- each one becomes a separate destination) and then add the links to the Google ads on each one and/or accept other advertising on each post. NOT just on the blog left and right hand columns or on the top or bottom of a page but on each post. Of course as I finish this blog post-- maybe what I should have done -- or should do is submit it to the Associated Content site to see what kind of rating it gets and how much I can get paid for providing info on their new publishing paradigm...if any readers know more about this new launch or what's up...Does it tie in with Google's Base Camp? Or what's up? email me @[email protected].
