Algorithmic (almost) content creation

This article from Wired on Demand Media and their demand-based creation and delivery of 'content' is an important movement on the Web (and off the Web too).

The choice quote is :

Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it — perhaps an impossible proposition — the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value.

The costs to be cut are the costs of creation (manufacturing). The delivery costs are already nearly zero. Currently Demand Media is generating answers to unfulfilled questions using 'crowd sourcing' and blending media assets like video and photos and quickly written text. I wonder if someday even the text could be auto-generated.

I'm sure in the next six months we'll see a blooming of clones - 'DemandMedia for FooBar' style.

Quite a while ago I had thought about what it would take to build a content site with heavy automation on the gathering, review and approval of content. But I had not thought of optimizing that process based on audience demand. Quite clever really.

update
Just found this post on ReadWriteWeb from a writer that previously worked with DemandMedia - required reading to see things from the viewpoint of someone actually creating DemandMedia content.

Choice quote:

They [writers] appear to be overwhelmingly women, often with children, often English majors or journalism students, looking for a way to do what they love and make a little money at it.

Compare those demographics to Wikipedia: more than 80% male, more than 65% single, more than 85% without children, around 70% under the age of 30.

Working hard is overrated

Very insightful post about startups and hard work from someone who has been there.

We agreed that a lot of what we then considered "working hard" was actually "freaking out". Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn't have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors, being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn't -- and other time-consuming activities.

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.

Good tips on starting a startup

This is a very decent (but short) article on things to do and think about if you are starting to develop your own small Web-based software startup. It's from Read/Write Web and part of a larger series. If you have fifteen years of experience, you'll know this already - otherwise take a look.
How To Create a Web App