> The transition was going to be arduous and complicated. This was particularly true for the people who write AOL's press releases, who had to work overtime issuing statements with business terms like "restructuring" (which means firing people), "streamlining" (which also means firing people), "re-branding" (which means making people forget all the negative associations they have with AOL and Arianna Huffington), and "synergy" (which doesn't mean anything).
But then you'd miss this:
"Non-paid blogger system"? Please. We may be whores, but we are not sluts.
Genius.
Just one of the many points where this guy made me chortle with schadenfreudige glee.
"Please. We may be whores, but we are not sluts."
I'm getting to the point of just feeling sorry for them nowadays.
I still remember sitting in my basement watching the NASDAQ hit 5000 and thinking this wasn't going to end well. The AOL/Time Warner merger a month later didn't help that feeling. Too bad I was a poor 19 year old college student who didn't understand how the financial world works at the time.
(note: I'm not sure of my history here, so please feel free to correct me if you know better)
Clear miscalculation on my part as AOL are still fail.
But that plot is played out somewhere every week, it's not worth reading unless you have a personal interest in the people or the companies, or unless the story is told in a way that moves you. Thus, I suggest you stick with it and read the entire thing. Or if you're too busy to read the entire thing, skip it: There'll probably be a story just like this about Yahoo! shuttering one of its acquisitions in a week or so.
It was a sad and frustrating story to hear (though amusing and snarky as Eric tends to be, from my limited experience).
I'm a big proponent of doing what you love because you love it (like running a forum or BBS or online service or writing) rather than trying to suck every last penny out of something that you can. But when someone else is making every last dime on something while expecting your contribution to be entirely uncompensated, save for "but you'll see your name on a byline!", it is almost downright sickening.
Unfortunately, this is a trend on the internet. It seems that fewer places are willing to pay for writers or even photographers, anymore. You should be thankful that your work is going to be used at all and then you can use the fact that someone published your content as leverage to promote yourself into something that does pay, somewhere . . . unless those people want you to work for "ego", too.
It's very difficult to justify not paying content creators when you've just made a few hundred million dollars off of the "they should thank me for printing them!" model. Or . . . maybe that's exactly why it's so easy to justify. Why pay when they're giving it to you for free?
I'm grateful I never entered one of these industries. I grew up with dreams of being a writer. Then I had dreams of being a radio broadcaster. Then I had dreams of being a video game developer. I went into the world of enterprise software and unix and linux, instead. A world where there is competition, but people aren't practically throwing themselves at you to do the job for free, because it's "fun".
For years people would be very happy to produce work and get (somewhat) paid for it because it is about writing something they are passionate for. Then, this gets disrupted because the owner gets a big payout and doesn't share. Disgusted with how things have turned out, since they now perceive their work to be worth more, they leave. Suddenly the talent acquisition has turned into nothing.
(The case of HuffPost is somewhat different, presumably the traffic would stay around longer. )
But this business model is subject to disruption. I read that pirates operate on a fairness principle, because many of them suffered as sailors in government ships. May be someone here can start a HuffPost alternative that issues equity instead?
You won't be disappointed to read him.
