History of Associated Content

Sometimes in the month of November 2004, Luke Beatty, then the director of Wand, a product search and taxonomy online directory was deeply engrossed in thought of developing something which would be a pioneer work in search advertising. What he foresighted then soon came to reality with a single office in the basement of his home. Even he couldn't realize at that point of time, how his dream will soon turn out to be the dream and passion of millions. Yes, I am talking of Associated Content, the 'Swiss-cheese encyclopedia', as he himself described. Since then Associated Content or AC as everybody loves to call it has only climbed towards the top. From a lonely child in the midst of information desert, today it has grown up as a young mother. And today it will not be an exaggeration, if it is claimed that AC is the mother of all CPs who either for their passion or money get nourished by her love, affection and tenderness.

In 2006, Associated Content bagged the biggest deal by signing contract with venture capital firm SoftBank group, which poured $5.4 million just in the beginning of the joint venture. Since then AC has never looked back. When asked for the theme of AC, in one of the interviews, Beatty politely replied that he was thinking of something which would not be at par with blogging and will be a benchmark in search engine advertising. His AC is the content hub for the CP, by the CP, and of the CP. Rich with audio, video and text content, the entire web media had enough contributions from all the content producers who are regularly donating and making it content wealthy. In March, 2007 Associated Content started its famous bonus program where a people contributing worthy content can earn enough to get cheered with. This announcement was a huge success and people started to dispense more and more articles, videos to it.
"Some are paid, some aren't. Some don't care - they are interested in getting published more, and are not looking for payment. Some of the content producers that produce the top pieces for us deserve monetary consideration, and that top quality stuff we pay for. Our buyers are taking content all day and make buying decisions. Some people submit material to be paid, however most find the value of us hosting and publishing and providing exposure is what they want. Our best content producers are lawyers, and researchers who are not necessarily freelance, and are publishing because they want to broadcast their material." - This is what he said when asked by Techrockies interviewer, that if he pays people for content.

It is useless to say how AC is close to the hearts of more than 50,000 registered content producers as of January 2007. Rather it's more interesting to know the news which counts for the popularity of Associated Content. It has well taken a place in the wikipedia and not only that; on April 24, 2007 Fox & Friends (a morning television show on Fox News Channel) mistakenly reported as fact a news story parody published on Associated Content.

AC is here to stay, AC is here to win. This is the tone clearly audible in the voice of Beatty and all other CPs like me. Everybody with their three and half years of journey with the largest content bank, wants to utter only a single sentence; 'Long Live AC'.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Content
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,1983,DRMN_23910_4443841,00.html
http://www.techrockies.com/story/0003003.html