I was also at AOL in the early Weblogs, Inc. days. While we didn't look at ourselves as content farmers the same way you'd look at demand media, I definitely think the $4/post model has it's benefits. For me, it was an incentive to go through a large body of work fairly quickly. Thanks to my work at Engadget too, I was able to get a crash course in technology journalism from the master (Peter Rojas).<p>I often think of Weblogs, Inc. as a sort of freak of startup nature. Very little funding, but the company had a huge impact, especially on its acquirer. AOL's core publishing technology platform is Blogsmith, Weblogs, Inc.'s home grown CMS, not to mention how Engadget, Autoblog and other influential Weblogs, Inc. blogs have given other AOLers insight into what good content looks like.<p>As Marshall mentions in the post, I'm wondering where the new minor leagues are. I'd guess just being a regular contributor to Hacker News might be as close as there is right now.
tl;dr :<p>Marshall Kirkpatrick editor Mashable got his start at a content farm while working at a convenience store.<p>Then got hired by TechCrunch after his stories got lots of traction.<p>Then got hired as editor of RRW after TechCrunch.<p>He sees AOL's content strategy creating a similarly powerful platform for great writers to rise from the depths to the top.<p>Kind of an interesting counter point to current criticisms that AOL is only going to produce "quantity over quality..."
Again this drives home a solid point that even if you're doing mechanical-turk-esque labor, if you strive to be the best in your field you'll get noticed. Content farms are, as he said, the minor leagues for a bigger tech writing gig.
There was a great article in the new yorker a couple weeks ago about the current CEO of AOL and how he is building the largest team of journalists in the country (and possibly world). don't have it on hand at the moment but it was a great read.