Seed

Overheard

A Seed contributor's piece for Pawnation was recently featured on Good Morning America.

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Create. Get heard. Get paid. Seed gives writers and photographers around the world a way to contribute to AOL’s 80+ original sites.

 

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A greenhouse for content
Great content can spring up almost anywhere, at any time. There’s simply no rhyme or reason to it, no way to predict tomorrow’s hot stories and images – and even if there were, you couldn’t possibly cover and distribute them all. Or could you?

This started us thinking: Maybe there is a way we could harvest more of this fresh, original content and get it to our readers. Maybe if we injected a little of our technology into the way we produce content, we’d be able to cover, if not the whole world, at least a heck of a lot more of it. Sounds crazy, right?

They said Edison was crazy, too. Welcome to Seed.

So how does it work?
What makes Seed work is an unprecedented combination of technological and editorial know-how – two things that we’re pretty good at to begin with.

It starts with the technology: Using predictive modeling techniques, we created a tool to help identify which topics will be hot with users, and when.

And now the editorial: When a topic has been identified, our editors decide how to get the best coverage. They can either assign it to a staff reporter, or open it up to experts around the world through the Seed.com site – effectively creating the largest pool of freelance talent imaginable.

After that, it’s business as usual: Once the story is submitted, our award-winning editors take over and give the story their full attention. If and when a story is ready to go live, it gets routed to the appropriate AOL sites. The contributor gets paid accordingly.  

And what do I get out of it?
More original content means more opportunity for high-quality, contextually relevant ad placements – and hence more chances for you to connect with your customers.

Seed opens the internet up to a host of new contributors, and gives voice to those with a point of view on everything and anything, from pop bands to politics to pet rocks. Seed also allows us to cover large-scale events, where a single media outlet couldn’t possibly cover every angle cost effectively, or in real time. In a nutshell, Seed expands our scope while making our content more relevant. When you want to connect with an audience, more relevance is a very good thing.

More broadly speaking, Seed is part of AOL’s commitment to developing the best content on the web. It’s that same commitment that has led us to hire 12 Pulitzer Prize winners, and increase our editorial contributors sevenfold – from 500 to 3500 – in the span of a year. The better the content, the happier the consumers – and the better the results for advertisers.

About our editors

  • Saul Hansell, Seed's Programming Director, is a veteran of The New York Times and the founding editor of the paper's "Bits" technology blog.
  • Kristi Anderson, Seed's Community Manager, was previously managing editor at AOL Living, where she worked with AOL's largest virtual freelance community.

 

Visit the site: http://seed.com

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