eHow
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| 200px | |
| Web address | eHow.com |
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| Commercial | Yes |
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Type of site
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Content farm |
| Registration | Yes |
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Demand Media, Inc. |
| Launched | March 1999 |
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Alexa rank
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 130 (August 2012[update])[1] |
| Current status | Active |
eHow is an online how-to guide with more than 1 million articles and 170,000 videos offering step-by-step instructions. eHow articles and videos are created by freelancers[2] and cover a wide variety of topics organized into a hierarchy of categories. Any eHow user can leave comments or responses, but only contracted writers can contribute changes to articles. The writers work on a freelance basis, being paid by article. eHow is frequently called a content mill.[3][4][5]
History
eHow.com was founded in March 1999 by Courtney Rosen. The company raised $25 million from venture capitalists, including Hummer Winblad, Peter Gardner of Media Technology Ventures, now Allegis Capital, General Electric and Fingerhut. An editing team, led by Bill Marken (former editor in chief for Sunset Magazine) and Sharon Beaulaurier, hired 200 professional writers, and the company employed a 50-person engineering team. By 2001, eHow had created ten thousand articles. eHow logged 4 million unique visitors per month. Despite the popularity, eHow was not profitable and ran out of funding in the Dot-com bubble of 2001.[citation needed]
In 2001, IdeaExchange bought eHow with the hope of charging eHow's readers to access how-to instructions. eHow remained unprofitable and in early 2004, IdeaExchange sold eHow to Jack Herrick and Josh Hannah.[citation needed]
To keep costs low, Herrick and Hannah maintained eHow themselves with the assistance of one part-time software engineer. They restored content that had been lost during the bankruptcy and added improvements that made the site easier to use. In January 2005, they started a wiki-based companion site, wikiHow, which allowed both anonymous and registered users to create and modify articles. Between March 2004 and April 2006, eHow traffic increased from 250,000 visitors per month to more than 4 million visitors per month.[6]
In May 2006, eHow was acquired by Demand Media while Herrick and Hannah retained control of wikiHow.[citation needed]
In September 2006, eHow launched weHow.com, which allowed registered users to create new how-to articles (eHow articles continued to be written exclusively by hired writers). In March 2007, in concert with the introduction of social networking features such as messaging, friend lists and forums, weHow merged with eHow.[citation needed]
As of December 2007, eHow.com hosted more than 140,000 how-to articles and videos and has received more than 11 million unique visitors per month. By May 2008, the number of articles had increased to more than 337,000.[citation needed]
In April 2010, eHow closed its ability to accept newly generated user content. Professional writers and topic experts can submit an application via Demand Studios for the opportunity to write articles for eHow.[citation needed]
As of August 2010, eHow was hosting more than 2 million articles and videos and had received visits from nearly 46 million visitors each month.[citation needed]
Demand Media went public on January 27, 2011 at which time eHow was valued (based on revenue contribution to Demand) at $1.8 Billion.[citation needed]
In May 2011, eHow canceled its revenue share program that paid part of the advertising profits of writer generated articles to the writers. The company offered one time cash payouts to buy the rights to profitable articles. The writers had the option to sell the rights to their articles to eHow or remove them from the website.[citation needed]
Criticisms
Demand Media and eHow in particular have been criticized for large amounts of low-quality content and for operating as a content mill, paying contributors low rates for content intended to rank high in search results, rather than focus on quality information,[3][4][5] with poor quality articles intended mainly to drive up search results rather than inform, specifically by targeting the long tail search results missed by other sites, a category considered by Google to be a modern update on spam.[7]
In 2010 and 2011 Google implemented changes to their algorithms intending to reduce the ranking and impact of content farms. These changes led to a 40% drop in traffic to Demand Media sites.[3][8][9][10] Demand Media responded to the algorithm changes, saying their business model remained solid.[11]
Search engine DuckDuckGo's CEO Gabriel Weinberg has criticized eHow, along with other Demand Media websites, labeling the company a "content mill," because of the website's search engine driven content, low article quality and low writer salaries. DuckDuckGo filters out eHow content because of Weinberg's perception that Demand Media produces low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google Searches for the purposes of promoting advertising.[12]
Another search engine, Blekko also regards eHow as spam, blacklists the site and filters eHow results out.[13]
Wired magazine has also criticized eHow and Demand Media, calling their content: "slapdash" and a "factory stamping out moneymaking content".[2]
References
- ^ "Ehow.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2012-08-02.
- ^ a b Roth, Daniel (2009). "The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model". Wired. Retrieved 27 July 2010. Unknown parameter
|month=ignored (help) - ^ a b c Bercovici, Jeff. "Google Traffic to Demand Media Sites Down 40 Percent". Forbes. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ a b "Rise of the Content Mills". Loyola University Center for Digital Ethics and Policy. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ a b "Demand Media's Planet of the Algorithms". Business Week. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "wikiHow: History of eHow". Retrieved 4 December 2009.
- ^ "Content Farm Vs.". SEOBook. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "Google tweaks algorithm to push down low quality sites". New York Times. 25 February 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "Seeking to Weed Out Drivel, Google Adjusts Search Engine". New York Times. 25 February 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "googleblog "Finding More High Quality Sites in Search"". Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "A Statement About Search Engine Algorithm Changes". demandmedia.com. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ Mims, Christopher (2010). "The Search Engine Backlash Against 'Content Mills'". Retrieved 26 July 2010. Unknown parameter
|month=ignored (help) - ^ "Blekko Bans Content Farms Like Demand Media's eHow From Its Search Results".
External links
- eHow website
- Demand Media, Inc.
- "For these sites their best asset is a good name", Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2006
