Growing Demand Blog

I can’t believe I’m writing this. It seems like only weeks ago that we whiteboarded the vision and rough (ever evolving) plan for Demand Media. When I look back and think about what the team has accomplished throughout the last 3 years, it’s almost impossible to digest.

When we started the company, we set many auspicious goals.  We set out to prove that integrated and distributed social media was an essential ingredient of every web site and that ad supported quality content could drive significant traffic growth for vertically focused web sites.    Through our network of properties, our social media tools, and our Pluck partners the market now better understands the power of distributed social media, vertical networks, and curated content. This level of achievement has brought forth a range of honors and recognition such as ClickZ’s Marketing Excellence Award, CNET’s Webware 100, eContent 100, Mashable’s Open Web Award,Webvisions’ Webvisionary Award and many others in recent months.  We hope that “managing from the future” will allow us to continue advancing this new media evolution; in playing this role, we have achieved a number of milestones we set out to accomplish three years back.

Explosive growth on our owned and operated network of marquee properties
Over the past year, eHow has grown from 7.4 million unique visitors to more than 36 million.  LIVESTRONG.COM has grown from from zero visitors to more than 3.5 million strong. Golflink members are tracking nearly 1,000 rounds of golf per day, Trails.com members have hiked 1.7 million miles and Cracked.com has nearly doubled its page views to over 50 million in just one year. While the growth statistics across these sites and others within our network are stunning, the real milestone is that our formula for combining community, curated social content and SOUL works. We are equally proud that leading brands such as Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Target, RadioShack, Pedigree, Safeway, PBS, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Red Bull, POM Wonderful, Clear2o and many other advertisers have ventured beyond the banner and have successfully immersed their brands in these unique online experiences.

Driving engagement for leading digital destinations through integrated social media
Now a vital and integral part of more than 400 sites, including USA Today, Whole Foods, The NFL, Kraft, Condé Nast, The Washington Post, Lowe’s and many others, our Pluck software group has reached a massive footprint and is now serving more than 3 billion social interactions every month. Pluck technology has earned countless accolades, not just for the software but for outstanding implementations created by Pluck’s pioneering customers.  Pluck has allowed one of our key founding principles to come true – social media IS everywhere – and this is just the beginning.

Fueling breakaway growth with Demand Studios, our social publishing ecosystem
In less than 3 years, our vision of creating useful quality content through a social curation platform has become a reality and is driving the growth of our owned and operated network. Demand Studios (professionally curated quality articles, videos and blog posts) is rapidly expanding the reach of our owned and operated properties and providing new growth opportunities for leading digital brands. Demand Studios is producing 2,000 pieces of original content each day, and that content reaches tens of millions of people each month. The best part is that this content is creating income for people across the country who wanted to monetize their creative skills in a professional way. Our creator community, now more than 10,000 strong, has earned more than $13 million from their passion, talent and experience. It’s these talented individuals, including students, teachers, attorneys, and Pulitzer prize winning writers who are driving quantity and quality that’s challenging all assumptions about how content is created and monetized.

Advancing the domain registration business with content and community
We’ve started to fulfill our vision of bringing relevant content and social interaction to the world of domains. Domain registration represents the inception of websites – it’s this inception point where rich content and community experiences are needed most. Small business owners and personal site creators want to add syndicated, professional content and world class community tools to their new web sites but don’t always know how. This month we will begin offering a packaged edition of our content and social media capabilities to a select group of small sites and domain registrants.  We are using the data gained from our internal properties and see an enormous opportunity to dramatically and rapidly increase the value of these embryonic web sites.

Building an unparalleled team that is shaping the future of the web every day
I am the most proud of how our team has grown over the past three years. We now have nearly 500 professionals working in Santa Monica, Austin, Bellevue, New York and London as one company with one mission and a united set of goals. It’s their commitment, creativity and strength that has elicited the recognition and reputation we’ve garnered as disruptive company, revolutionizing the way online media works.

As I look back on the last 3 years, I am proud of what we have accomplished, but far from satisfied.   There is so much work to be done. We have only scratched the surface and will use the lessons of the past three years to help guide us into the future.  We recognize that we are part of an evolution AND a revolution in media and look forward to continued growth of our team, online properties, technologies and branded partners in the years to come.

Last week we celebrated our 3^rd anniversary locally in our three largest office locations (Santa Monica, Austin and Bellevue).  While we know we’re still in the early innings, there is SO much to celebrate. Check the blog again soon for photos and great moments from Demand Media’s offices, toasting the completion of a remarkable 3^rd year and looking forward to accelerating the revolution in our 4^th!

Richard Rosenblatt is the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media. A serial entrepreneur and Internet visionary, Richard has built, operated and sold numerous Internet media companies with a combined value of more than $1.3 billion.