Shane Snow's Contently

I first met Shane Snow last year at the FourSquare Day party. He asked me a few questions. Next thing you know I find myself quoted in Fast Company.

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I Have Been Quoted In Fast Company

I saw him on and off here and there. We exchanged a few tweets along the way.

I saw him in a big way again at the end of the year at Charlie O'Donnell organized big snowball party in Madison Square Park. It was a blast.

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Weeks later I met him again at a General Assembly party.

"What have you been up to lately?" I asked.

He mentioned the startup that looks like today stole the show at the TechStars Demo Day.

AdAge: Four Startups Marketers Need to Know: Contently ..... This is a writer marketplace for marketers looking to produce branded content. It's like LinkedIn for unemployed journalists looking to use their skills and expensive masters degrees to lure some of the dollars marketers are dedicating to produce their own content. Journos get free profile pages to show their stuff and, on the brand side, Contently is a tool to manage workflow, payments and all the other joys of editorial production. ..... "Ninety-thousand journalists lost their jobs in last decade," said Contently co-founder Shane Snow. "Great writers are out there, but there's no great way to find them." ...... What we love is that this is the exact opposite of so-called content farms such as Demand Media, which pays anyone on the internet pennies for posts on search-friendly topics. Contently is about linking real, trained journalists with brands who need professionally produced content. After launching in beta in January, the company amassed a network of 2,000 journalists and works with publishers such as LinkedIn, Best Buy, Comcast and Mint. Mr. Snow today announced a pilot program with American Express's small-business site, Open Forum. The site takes a cut of all transactions on its site and is on track to clear $1 million in sales this year. Contently closed $335,000 round of funding this summer and is raising $3 million in additional funding.

Good job, Shane Snow.

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Behind every success there is a team. Good job team.

I Knew Google Would Deal With Content Farms

Image via CrunchBaseAbout a decade ago when blogs became popular as a platform, the blogosphere started seriously skewing the Google search results. Google took care of that. Google made the problems go away. In the recent years content farms have messed things up. I have known all along that Google has what it takes to take care of the problem. And looks like Google just delivered.

Content farms do have their place. But they don't get to skew search results.