This in from Alley Insider, AOL announces that they are going to be using a new algorithm that finds what is “hot” on the net at the moment and then sends out article assignments to freelancers. After these freelancers complete a piece it will be edited by some of the 500 AOL editors and then posted to the main site. Talk about a terrible plan and catastrophe waiting to happen.

I personally do not like the idea of an algorithm telling the company what needs to be written about and what doesn’t. Isn’t this why we have REAL editorial teams? Don’t they make the “big” bucks to do this type of work? I really don’t think that allowing an algorithm to choose what your top stories for the day or week are going to be is a good, new business model for AOL.

AOL says that they will also be paying upwards of $100 per post yet some may not even be reimbursed for their work. AOL’s payment terms seem to be a bit vague at the time.

Anyways, I can’t see this going to well and I have a feeling that after a few weeks or months this type of content creation strategy will go out the window. Maybe AOL should just find and hire some decent writers that know what the hell they are doing?