Demand Studios First Look: Let the Carnage Commence

Well, it's official. The would-be savior of Demand Media's quality is now in effect. The chosen elite -- i.e. not me -- have received their "congrats, you is a grammer god" e-mail. The forums are full of jubilation as one by one, the lucky writers announce their status. It is a good day for many and a bad day for most.

Now, I've mentioned my theories in previous hubs about how this situation will play out. Frankly, I'm not overly worried. I have other clients and I can easily rely on them while I wait for the program to fail...and it WILL fail.

What makes this situation particularly absurd is that, despite getting into the program, those 15% of writers are yet to see new titles. Demand assures them that titles are coming. Yeah, like we haven't heard that before. None of the special sections, such as Money, Chron and Livestrong have seen much -- if anything -- in the way of title drops. Basically, these people have first dibs on titles that aren't there. It's like dangling a large pizza in front of a crowd of starving people, leaving it just out of reach.

Thanks to the rebellious CEs at Demand Studios Sucks, we now basically know the finer points of the so-called "scoring" system. If you look at your overall score, you might see things like 3.9 or 4.3. In other words, you'd think that CEs score in a similar fashion, right? WRONG. Although your score may appear in tenths, CEs don't have that kind of flexibility. They have to give a round number. A CE can't give you, say, a 3.9 on an article. If the article isn't exceptional enough for a 4 or lousy enough for a 3, then they have to give a 3, even if the article is better than that. This goes to show how incredibly difficult it is to follow a rubric with such limited range. Worse still, CEs are heavily monitored to make sure that their scoring isn't too lenient or too hard. This presents a problem for many writers. All it takes is one CE who was slammed for being too soft. To appease his superiors, he'll hand out 3s like candy just to get the higher-ups off his back.

That's not the best part. So far -- and probably for quite a while -- nobody can see what their individual score on an article is. This means that you could get booted from First Look and not even know it. The forums will soon be clogged with people asking if there are no titles, or if they simply dropped the ball. This doesn't surprise me, since Demand isn't exactly known for using its one brain cell very efficiently.

To those of you who didn't make the cut, I recommend that you stop worrying. More and more writers will join our ranks as they receive that dreaded 3 for using passive voice one too many times. Get away from Demand for a few days. Forget about waiting for expired titles to drop. Just push this train wreck of a company out of your mind. Focus on other clients, or sell your rejected articles on other websites. Things will be back to normal soon and the geniuses who implemented First Look will be too busy patting themselves on the back to notice.

In closing, open a beer, grab some popcorn and put on your 3D glasses. It's going to be a fun ride.