<story><title>Epic Fail: The Rise and Fall of Demand Media</title><url>http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-the-rise-and-fall-of-demand-media-1200914646/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jotm</author><text>&amp;quot;Under Google’s new algorithm, code-named Panda, companies that produced lots of content got penalized&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Hahaha! Yeah, let me fix that for you: &amp;quot;companies that produced lots of &lt;i&gt;useless, worthless, trash&lt;/i&gt; content got penalized&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Good for Google, good for everyone, screw Demand media for ad-filled &amp;quot;content farms&amp;quot; on crappy domains like 3d-blueray-players.com&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Even eHow and Livestrong are borderline spammy, although they do have enough &lt;i&gt;good&lt;/i&gt; content to make them popular (and they are).&lt;p&gt;Should&amp;#x27;ve focused on quality content while they were a $2 billion company instead of whining about it now.</text></comment>
<story><title>Epic Fail: The Rise and Fall of Demand Media</title><url>http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-the-rise-and-fall-of-demand-media-1200914646/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tomasien</author><text>&amp;quot;The freefall of Demand serves as a cautionary tale for hype in the Internet age: No company burns so hot that it can’t cool off.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What a crock - what cautionary tale? A company that grew really fast, is still producing lots of cash, and is already public? Companies rise and fall and are dependent on lots of other forces. Airbnb could crash any time if cities decided they don&amp;#x27;t want it (I doubt it will), same with Uber, and TONS of companies are in some way dependent on Google not shutting them out.&lt;p&gt;Seems like this was a pretty crappy business with extremely low value added to the world, but it&amp;#x27;s so obnoxious to hear every single company that starts to decline or doesn&amp;#x27;t grow the way we thought it would as a &amp;quot;cautionary tale&amp;quot;. Companies grow, companies die.</text></comment>