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Date published
December 6, 2011
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Yahoo is rebranding Associated Content – the open article creation and distribution site – as Yahoo Voices. The transition to a new name also updates the design, standards for publication, and the content base.
Yahoo Voice is “home for more than 2 million pieces of original content, spanning thousands of different topics, created by more than 500,000 individual experts and enthusiasts,” according to the Yahoo Corporate Blog.
The majority of the articles were originally created for Associated Content, both prior to and after the Yahoo acquisition of that site in 2010. Post-acquisition, Yahoo continued to run the site in conjunction with the newly created Yahoo Contributor Network publishing platform. As of the launch of Yahoo Voice, Associated Content is being officially sunset.
While many of the articles from Associated Content are being migrated directly into Voice, “75,000 pieces of inactive and outdated content from Associated Content” are being retired. Much of the retiring content fails to meet Yahoo’s new quality standards.
The updated submission guidelines emphasize that the site is looking for “unique, well-written perspectives – especially first-person stories – from a range of experts, enthusiasts, and citizen journalists.” To ensure that those standards are met, pieces are only published after review by a Yahoo editor.
Yahoo Voice will be using the same income model as Associated Content; authors will be paid for their work based on the amount of traffic a given page receives. This model is similar to how many “content farms” function, but Yahoo’s editorial guidelines and review will – hopefully – remove the site from this ill-reputed category.
Authors who may want to publish to Yahoo Voice but who don’t yet have the experience or refined writing to meet the editorial standards can learn more about writing solid content through the Yahoo Style Guide and Yahoo Contributor Academy. Both of these tools work as “comprehensive tools for translating […] knowledge into useful, engaging online content.”
This move could at least in part be due to Google’s Panda update, which targeted content farms. Sites like eHow and HubPages have tried to adjust in a Post-panda world.