When I called Twitter out on my post of the top 10 failures of 2009 for "failing to innovate," what I probably should have said was this: Twitter has done a decent job of implementing features that we first saw being used by third-party apps. The concept of user lists? Sawhorse Media introduced those . Retweet functions? That was a user idea that had already been implemented formally by many mobile and desktop applications. And the hot Contributor API is something that CoTweet has been doing for a while. The geotagging API is hardly new, either. But instead of saying that Twitter failed to innovate, let's instead name a few features we love from third-party apps that we think they should integrate themselves - maybe with a key acquisition or two. Sponsor Autocompleting Usernames Third-Party App That Does This: Twitdroid , DestroyTwitter It's a rather simple feature, but it would make our lives a lot easier. When typing an @ reply or cc'ing a user, it helps to have a cheat sheet in the form of an autocompletion feature that remembers all your friends. Allow Multimedia Uploading and Embedding Third-Party Apps That Do This: PowerTwitter , Twitpic The convoluted process of uploading media to a third party and getting your content synced up to your Twitter account can be frustrating, especially when bugs arise. And not being able to preview images or videos before clicking through is a pressure point, as well. Threaded Views for Conversations Third-Party Apps That Do This: Twitdroid , TwiToaster Being able to see what an @ reply is all about can turn into a trail of digital breadcrumbs ten tabs long. Seeing a threaded conversation in a single click would be much more convenient. Management & Analytics Third-Party Apps That Do This: Bit.ly , TwitterCounter , Tweetmeme , DoesFollow , Twitter Karma I'm obsessed, you're obsessed, we're all obsessed with follower counts! Not to mention clickthroughs, reciprocity, retweets, and all the metrics that make up the statistical side of Internet fame. Real-time measurement of Twitter activity would be worth paying for. Official Mobile & Desktop Applications Third-Party Apps That Do This: Tweetdeck , Seesmic , Tweetie , Twitdroid , TwitterBerry The single greatest opportunity for Twitter innovation (and yes, we're resisting the very strong urge to make a portmanteau from those two words) is perhaps in the desktop and mobile app space. It's one of the most clearly monetizable avenues for Twitter to pursue, and the "official" stamp of approval on an application would guarantee that app's success. Moreover, there would probably be clear opportunities for an official app to come pre-loaded on laptops and mobile devices. Clearly, there's a universe of features for Twitter to choose from. From social gaming to DM schedule reminders, oneforty is like a catalog of what Twitter could - and perhaps should - be doing next. What do you think - what Twitter features would you like to see launched in 2010? Give us your opinion in the comments. Discuss

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5 Features from Third-Party Apps Twitter Should Integrate

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. Sponsor 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 Swallowing my pride My friends who first told me about Demand Studios are wordsmiths, copy editors of the highest skill levels, who worked for Demand Studios for $3.50 a story. Yes, $3.50 a story . But one friend, once he had the hang of the system, managed to work fast enough to raise his rate to about $20 an hour, from his couch, on his schedule, while waiting to get a full-time job elsewhere. Another friend also edited for Demand Studios, as a supplement to a part-time job before eventually getting full-time work, after about a year of underemployment. Demand Media doesn't need help with public relations from me. They're compiling comments in an internal forum from their writers about why they love Demand Studios. And plenty of people have commented. They 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. Admittedly, working for Demand Studios isn't a point of pride for most professional journalists. But the interface and the editing allow people with other expertise to share knowledge. I recommended the site to my father the contractor. It could be a good way for a retiree with a lifetime of knowledge to document life lessons for others. People with disabilities, or people who have to fit their work around children's schedules, or people between jobs have a place to earn some money, from their living rooms. It's not the only "writer mill" out there, but it has been under fire lately, and a look inside might add a little light. Jay Rosen's interview with the CEO of Demand Media, Richard Rosenblatt, done via IM, included this quote from Rosenblatt: "What's more like a sweatshop: someone's living room working their own hours or a typical newsroom?" Certainly some people in newsrooms are feeling pressure these days, but perhaps that quote isn't quite fair. For a newsroom copy editor to earn $28 an hour (not factoring in benefits), at the Demand Studios rate of $3.50 a story , they would have to "edit" 64 stories in an eight-hour shift. I don't know of newsrooms that are quite at that point yet, but then again, we're in a global economy, with global pay rates. Some wordsmiths will choose to work from their couches. Take a good, broad look at what they produce before criticizing. Check out ReadWriteWeb's entire coverage of Demand Media and content farms: Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried How Google Can Combat Content Farms Jay Rosen Interviews Demand Media: Are Content Farms "Demonic"? Demand Media Is a Page View Generating Machine - And it's Working Answers.com: 31 Million Copied and Pasted Web Pages Can't Go Wrong The Age of Mega Content Sites - Answers.com and Demand Media How Demand Media Produces 4,000 Pieces of Content a Day Ad-Driven Content - Is it Crossing The Line? Discuss

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

I first became aware of Demand Media by reading this feature by Daniel Roth in the November 2009 issue of Wired [ Ed: ReadWriteWeb wrote a feature about it in August ] . In fact, Roth alerted me by email that his piece was about to come online, because he thought I would find it interesting. He was dead on. I found it fascinating, and also scary. Since then the discussion of these "content farms" (what ReadWriteWeb editor Richard MacManus called them recently) has picked up a lot intensity online. For a good round-up, see Jason Fry's recent post The Furor Over Content Farms . In the following interview with Demand Media founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, I explore this new online phenomenon. Sponsor Jay Rosen teaches journalism at NYU and blogs at PressThink , which won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Freedom Blog award. He is also the director of NewAssignment.Net and blogs at the Huffington Post. I've been discussing Demand Media a bit on Twitter, always referring to it as... (the demonic) Demand Media. This got the attention of someone from the company because I heard from Richard Rosenblatt, the founder and CEO, who said that I didn't understand the firm's mission. I asked him if he would do an interview with me to clarify what that mission was. He graciously agreed. Today I caught up with him by IM and we had the following exchange. Rosen : In the November 2009 Wired article by Daniel Roth, this was the part I thought most important: "Most media companies are trying hard to... boost the value of their online content until it matches the amount of money it costs to produce. But Rosenblatt thinks they have it exactly backward. 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." Now, when you wrote to me, you said I didn't get the mission of Demand Media. As I understand it, the mission is to make a ton of money on the Web by using data mining to understand demand and then cutting costs in this way Roth described. Do I have it wrong? Rosenblatt : It's not all about cost cutting but about building a sustainable media model that allows us to achieve our mission to build an engine for what the world wants to know and share. We do this by connecting consumers with content that meets their specific interests and [offers] connections to people that share their passion. To do this well, and at scale, has required significant innovation and investment. Rosen : Here's what I think Demand Media has right. It's important to know what people are interested in. It's good to have tools that tell us what they wish to know. Using that knowledge to guide production is innovation, too, which we need-- precisely because production is so easy and cheap and the tools are so good. But here's what I think bothers a lot of people, and leads to a description of your firm as a "content farm" or "factory." I read about the 11 people - and 15 different roles - involved in the production of articles and video in Demand Studios. I get your idea that "quality is based on relevance." But if you're trying to match costs to the available revenue for a given piece of content, what happens when editorial quality requires costs greater that what's available in search revenue? And who's watching out for that point? Rosenblatt : I like the way you describe and characterize our business; maybe we have a lot more in common that you think. We are building content that is evergreen and solving a different type of problem. We are focused on creating content that solves problems, answers questions, saves money, saves time, makes you laugh - content that improves people's lives in big and small ways. It's relevant and impactful to millions and millions of people every day. It must generally fit within the economic framework the Internet provides today. As those economics change so will we. Rosen : Okay I got that but I am not sure it answers this part of my question: ...if you're trying to match costs to the available revenue for a given piece of content, what happens when editorial quality requires costs greater that what's available in search revenue? And who's watching out for that point? Rosenblatt : We only make content that we think can be done responsibly and within our cost structure. Rosen : As you know, there's a conversation going on out there about Demand Media, and I want to show you a bit of it. The premise, as Jeff Jarvis puts it, is that companies like yours (and Associated Content, to name another) "produce crap that's just good enough to fool algorithms," especially Google's. This is said to be a problem for Google. So Jarvis writes, "I think we may see search fall as the sole or even key means of discovery and filtering of quality content. I see three rings of discovery today: search (Google); algorithms (see: Google News, Daylife); and humans (see: Twitter). Note again that Bit.ly alone causes as many clicks a month -- one billion -- as Google News. Human power rises again. That's what Fred Wilson says today when he argues that social beats search, because "it's a lot harder to spam yourself into a social graph." What do to you think of Wilson's idea, "social beats search" because it cannot be gamed as easily? If he's right, isn't that a threat to Demand Media's profits? Rosenblatt : First of all, we're not filling up search engines. We're creating content that lives on some of the most engaging websites in the world. These sites have really amazing tools that truly help people - whether it's managing your diabetes, motivating yourself to stop smoking, helping you drop your golf handicap, or determining what hike to take the kids on this weekend. And I wouldn't say we are even "search-led" any more. We are led by consumer demand. We are maniacally focused on giving users exactly what they want, where they want it. We have algorithms that tell us what search visitors want. And algorithms that tell us what YouTube visitors prefer. And we're working on new algorithms that tell us what social network users desire. And we're pretty sure the needs of mobile users will be different than all of the above - so we'll tune our approach for them too. Search is just where we started, because that's where most consumers started their information seeking experiences. But the world has changed a lot since we started Demand Media four years ago - and we're changing with it. Rosen : So you're getting social too and moving away from just search? Rosenblatt : Absolutely and have been planning this for years; we consider this a core part of our business and social has been at the center of our business since we started Rosen : Does the description of your company as a "content farm," content mill, factory (or even digital sweatshop) seem to you inaccurate or point missing in some way? I mean I know these are not nice terms or polite descriptions but are they wrong headed? Rosenblatt : Completely missing the point. We have significant editorial processes. Let me explain. How do we do this? We hire qualified professional writers, film-makers and copyeditors. Set clear editorial objectives and style guidelines for every piece. Require external sources with every submission. Copy edit what's been turned in. Fact-check it. Check it for plagiarism. Rate each piece so that writers get feedback. Provide education to improve the team members. Perform quality audits and take down content that doesn't meet current standards (thousands per month). Weed out content creators who aren't performing well or improving fast enough (we let go more than 100 creators per month). What's more like a sweatshop: someone's living room working their own hours or a typical newsroom? Rosen : When you're trying to build trust in an editorial brand, you pay those costs when they exceed available revenues, which I talked about. But it seems to me that Demand isn't trying to build trust in that way, it's trying to create content that meets demand, stays relevant and grabs the available search revenue. Why doesn't Demand Media create the bulk of its content under the Demand brand, like Reuters, say? Rosenblatt : We believe that the Internet continues to fragment and passionate audiences want their own community and brand. The brands we are focused on: our Web sites such as eHOW, Livestrong and our other properties. This is where we focus our branding energy. Rosen : As you know, journalism is in a good deal of peril today because of a collapsing economic model. I've read that Demand does not want to go anywhere near news, which is interesting, but do you feel you have discovered anything that would be useful to journalists as they try to survive Rosenblatt : We respect journalists very much. We think they need to use technology to help them figure out what audiences want and how to get value from their content more effectively. And there are big opportunities for them to increase quality by removing inefficiencies in the process of content creation. We would love to partner with as many publishers and media outlets as we can Rosen : You seem to know how to make money on the Web, why not get into news? Rosenblatt : Because we haven't figure out how to do it responsibly and profitably also, its completely saturated and highly competitive. Consumers already have more sources than they need. Rosen : Someone who follows my work and knew I was interviewing you told me to ask you this: Do you love the Web? The implied question there is: if you love the Web, then why are you doing this, running these content farms... ? Rosenblatt : OMG. My entire career and life has been about the Web. Trying to innovate and create value where open spaces exist. We do not have a content mill as we discussed but an efficient method to get people the information they need when they want it. That is improving the Internet and I am proud of it Rosen : Open spaces? What does that phrase mean? Rosenblatt : Where there is a lot of room for opportunity for not only our company but for other entrepreneurs. Rosen : I know you have a meeting to run to... thanks very much... anything you wish to add? Rosenblatt : I hope to see you in NY in the future to continue our dialogue. All my best and happy holidays. Check out ReadWriteWeb's entire coverage of Demand Media and content farms: Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried How Google Can Combat Content Farms Demand Media Is a Page View Generating Machine - And it's Working Answers.com: 31 Million Copied and Pasted Web Pages Can't Go Wrong The Age of Mega Content Sites - Answers.com and Demand Media How Demand Media Produces 4,000 Pieces of Content a Day Ad-Driven Content - Is it Crossing The Line? Discuss

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Jay Rosen Interviews Demand Media: Are Content Farms "Demonic"?

In just a few days at the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference , MIT's Media Lab will present a revolutionary interface that allows users to manipulate on-screen images with the wave of their hand. While we've seen gestural interfaces through the accelerometers in our smart phones and gaming-related devices, this system is different. MIT's bi-directional display interface (BiDi) screen is capable of capturing both touch and off-screen gestures through the use of embedded optical sensors. Sponsor According to the project team, "The BiDi Screen uses a sensor layer, separated a small distance from a normal LCD display. A mask image is then displayed on the LCD. When the bare sensor layer views the world through the mask, information about the distance to objects in front of the screen can be captured and decoded by a computer." In the past ReadWriteWeb has covered Pattie Maes presentation of what she describes as "sixth sense" - a wearable interface where users interact with a camera, mirror and colored finger caps. We've also looked at other gesture-based interfaces like Microsoft's Project Natal which encompass sensor-based cameras and voice recognition. Nevertheless, BiDi screen takes a different approach to spatial tracking. The system can be incorporated into a "thin LCD device" like a cellphone and it does not require the use of cameras, lenses, projectors or special gloves. For a complete list of BiDi project specifications or for a look at some of MIT's video demos, check out the project website . Discuss

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Future Interfaces: Gestures, Light and the BiDi Screen

In my recent post about the rise of content farms like Demand Media and the current incarnation of AOL, I posited that Google (and search in general) risks becoming less relevant as the Web gets drowned in lesser quality content. This is due to the scale at which these content farms are operating at - Demand Media alone pumps out 4,000 new pieces of content every day . The solution is of course for Google and other search engines to find better ways to surface quality content , whether that be from traditional news media, blogs or even Demand Media ( not all of its content is poor quality ). So how can Google evolve to identify quality content better? Sponsor Quality! Pah, Does Google Need to Bother? Perhaps we should first answer the question: why should Google be worried about the quality issue? After all, it has a virtual monopoly on the search market. The obvious and PR answer is that Google wants to provide the best search results possible for its users. But there is another big reason why Google needs to do something. So-called "quality" content providers are already well advanced in routing around Google, or at least making them less relevant. As I wrote yesterday, Reuters is onto something with its subscription business model. According to Chris Ahearn , President of Media at Thomson Reuters, the company already makes the "vast majority of its revenues" from subscription-based business models targeted to "vertical and niche markets." Reuters also provides services as well as just content. Bloomberg is another leading media company finding success with this strategy. The subscription model is making inroads, because the users themselves are flocking to it. A prime example comes from VC Paul Kedrosky , who became frustrated after doing various Google searches for "dishwasher reviews" and getting unsatisfactory results. He says that this has made him "more willing to pay for things" - in that case a Consumer Reports review of dishwashers. As Kedrosky archly noted, "the opportunity cost of continuing to try to sort through the info-crap in Google results was simply too high." What Google Can Do Google surely knows that quality (or lack thereof) in its index is a problem. As one part of the solution, Google is currently experimenting with real-time search results from social media sites like Twitter, MySpace and even Facebook. The theory is that users are more likely to get timely, relevant results by tapping into their social network. That's all well and good, but real-time search is unlikely to give you better results on the dishwasher search and other topic-focused search queries. So what else can Google do to identify and surface quality material? Some readers in Sunday's post (Tadhg, Charles Coxhead and others) argued that Google's current algorithm accounts for quality well enough, through the link economy. But many others thought that Google must improve its ranking of quality. Here were some of our readers' suggestions: Neutralize the link dilution; A.J. Kohn , who further wrote that "the introduction of SearchWiki, their measurement of short-clicks versus long-clicks, the new domain/brand SERP listing, snippet links, and use of breadcrumbs all point to a gathering movement to help determine quality without such a reliance on an ever diluted link ecosystem." Do a better job ranking authority; for more on this read Clay Shirky's post on "Algorithmic Authority." Introduce a user rating system; Tony Masinelli. Leverage sharing networks to determine where the quality is; Alex Kessinger . Special curation and algorithms on top of that; William Mougayar, whose company Eqentia does precisely that. p2p recommendation (i.e. filtering through your peers); Nick Taylor . Capture engagement data; Mark Littlewood . Give special weightings to categories of content, e.g. content farms, social media bookmarks blogs and Twitter; Aaron Savage . Use anti-spam type software to identify content that makes too much use of keywords; Barry . Track reputation against authors rather than URLs - a 'PageRank for People'; Marshall Clark . These are all great ideas. Google is almost certainly already doing some of these things already - as will other search companies. John Battelle is expecting a "major breakthrough" in search in 2010 and I hope he's right. One thing is for sure, Google will need to do more in 2010 if it's to stay ahead of the content farms and continue to surface quality content for its millions of users. Discuss

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How Google Can Combat Content Farms

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. Sponsor 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 . I wrote then that Demand Media operates based on a simple formula for success on the Web: create a ton of niche, mostly uninspired content targeted to search engines, then make it viral through social software and make lots of money through ads. Demand Media has been heavily funded to carry out that mission, to the tune of $355 million. In short, it's a well-funded, well-oiled page view generating machine. 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. I followed up by asking: is ad-driven content crossing a line? Low Quality, High Impact The bottom line is that the quality of content produced by these 'content farms' is dubious, which has an impact on both publishers and readers. Last week I analyzed the way wikiHow produces its content - its users do all of the writing and editing for free, via a Wikipedia-like platform. There was evidence that wikiHow's model is producing better content than its Demand Media counterpart for how-to articles, eHow. More worrying though is that Demand Media is producing thousands of these types of articles a day. So is the Web becoming awash with low-quality content produced by content farms like Demand Media, Answers.com and now AOL? Yes it is. From my analysis of Demand Media and similar sites, such content is very generic and lacks depth. While I wouldn't go as far as wikiHow founder Jack Herrick and say that it "lacks soul," it certainly lacks passion and often also lacks knowledge of the topic at hand. Arrington's analogy with fast food is apt - it is content produced quickly and made to order. Can Quality Survive? Given the impact that content farms are having right now, how can producers of 'quality' content survive? Chris Ahearn from Thomson Reuters claims that journalism will "do more than survive the Internet Age, it will thrive." Ahearn notes that Reuters makes the "vast majority of its revenues" from subscription-based business models targeted to "vertical and niche markets." Plus Reuters, he says, provides "valuable services - not just content." Ahearn also implies that syndication technologies, like Reuters' semantic analysis platform Open Calais , will lead to a new kind of "B2B content network" - where content creators and publishers can easily collaborate and make money together. Google Needs to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee In my view both writers and readers of content will need to work harder to get quality content. I know I'd rather read an article by The Economist on any given topic, than one generated by Demand Media. But we, as readers, need more help from Google and the other search engines. Right now 'quantity' still rules on the Web, 'quality' is hard to find. Perhaps that's why Reuters is betting on the subscription model - it hopes that consumers will just subscribe to quality content, thereby removing the need to search for it. I think there's something to that, which if true implies that Google will become less relevant in the future. Should Google be worried about that? Yes; and they are . I can only hope that Google and other search engines find betters ways to surface quality content, for its own sake as well as ours. Because right now Google is being infiltrated on a vast scale by content farms. If you thought it was bad enough that many professional blogs pump out 30 posts a day, often regurgitations of press releases or quick write-ups of "news" such as Twitter being down for a few minutes (note the irony of that tweet), this new type of Google gaming is on a far bigger scale. What Demand Media, Answers.com and AOL are doing is having a much greater impact on the quality and findability of content on the Web. See also: Demand Media Is a Page View Generating Machine - And it's Working Answers.com: 31 Million Copied and Pasted Web Pages Can't Go Wrong The Age of Mega Content Sites - Answers.com and Demand Media How Demand Media Produces 4,000 Pieces of Content a Day Ad-Driven Content - Is it Crossing The Line? Photo credit: ~Darin~ Discuss

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Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried

It's been a month since PayPal released its global payment APIs and the company is already primed to make some new announcements at today's Le Web Conference. ReadWriteWeb caught up with VP of Product Development Osama Bedier for an early look at the company's latest announcements. Sponsor We've already seen some 3rd party apps at the Innovate Conference last month, what's in store for Le Web? We're announcing a few new partnerships including one on Philips' Net TV. As of Q1 users will see inline payment on their televisions. Others include Greendizer for seamless bill pay and invoicing, GetGiving for one touch charity donations and Training Course Booker for fast course purchasing. The IPTV integration is an interesting one and Philips doesn't seem like an obvious partner. What other types of partnerships do you have in store for us? Honestly, we're not only looking to partner with the big brands, PayPal also wants to enable innovation from the little guy. We know we'll reach success when developers exceed our expectations. We're looking to them to decide how it plays out. Without taking credit for other developers' work, there are some great areas to innovate in voice authorization, real-time mobile applications, shipping, consumer apps and coupons. What does the future of PayPal look like? We're launching an app store where consumers can check out new and convenient payment forms and merchants can purchase specific solutions. How is this connected to Le Web's theme of the real-time web? We're looking to provide real time payment options and support. As a global leader you've got every opportunity to dictate industry pricing on apps and merchant services. What is the percentage you're going to take off merchant purchases from the app store?" We're not sure of that yet. What we do know is that it's going to be fair. We don't want to take our cue from some of the other closed platforms. We're offering visibility, easy integration of payment and smooth transactions. We're not trying to be Apple, we want as much cross device, cross platform transactions as possible. We make our money off the transactions, not the applications. If the future of PayPal is about seamless app integration, then doesn't that mean that in a perfect world PayPal is virtually indistinguishable from the app? Not exactly. We offer developers security authorization. Consumers want to know that their money is safe. There are lots of other providers, but developers choose us because our brand offers a sense of security. We're leveraging the success of our payment brand and the developers are responding. For more info on Le Web, check out Social Media Club House Discuss

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PayPal Partnering with Philips for NetTV Monetization