Freelance Organizer Helium May Be User-Gen 2.1 for News Sites
Consider it user-gen 2.1.
It’s easy to see Helium, whose Marketplace product comes out of within the next week or two, as a website organizing the loose and large gaggle of freelance writers out there. It’s attempting to do that, and that in and of itself is interesting. Even more curious though is how it points a way toward organizing user-gen and/or citizen journalism, separating wheat from chaff, providing some hierarchy of value to the booming, buzzing confusion out there.
Think about the main argument against user-gen out there: Sure, there’s a tiny amount of great stuff among so much junk, and how can you find the good stuff? Helium’s answer to that is to throw a set of 2.0 tools against the problem. User rankings, star ratings, a meritocracy that rewards the best stuff with money and recognition. It’s a set of tools — but more importantly, a way of thinking — that should have a lot of resonance with those news sites trying to figure out how to engage and to apply quality-centric standards to non-staff written content. 
(More on applications for news sites below).
Mark Ranalli started Helium in fall of 2006. Check out the site, and you can see its basic intent, that organziation of freelancers. Ranalli ‘s argument is clear: why should freelance be bought and sold the same way it has for a couple of hundred years when web tools can make the selling — for freelance writers — and the buying — for editors of all stripes — easier.
To that end, Helium offers what seems to me to be a straightforward approach, adapting web tools pioneered by sites as disparate as eBay. Amazon and NewsTrust, Fabrice Florin’s fledgling news-rating and rater-ranking site:
—Freelancers sign up and then can "publish" their articles on Helium
—The Helium community then rates the pieces. Ranalli says he has put into action a set of anti-gaming-the-system processes to prevent ratings click fraud and friendly logrolling.
—Articles are categorized by topic (this week, for instance, "What impact will Ralph Nader’s Candidacy Have on the Presidential Race," and "Is the New Contraceptive Pill That Stops Menstruation Healthy for Women". Each topic had about two dozen pieces written by freelancers, and by my quick read, is, politely, all over the board. I can see more value in the feature (travel, pets+) topics than in political ones, in which the level of content is subpar. But as Ranalli suggests, the system may improve the content over time.
—Would-be buyers then can buy any of those articles, and of course will gravitate to the top-ranked ones. In additon to the ranking of individual articles, the writers themselves are rated (1-5 stars), on a tough curve. Ranalli says only 4.5% of the 100,000 writers (who have added 625,000 articles to the site) have earned a single star, with two dozen attaining 5 stars.
—A new Marketplace allows buyers (who would be editors of newsletters, magazines, websites, etc.) to let it be known that they’re seeking an article on particular topic, say "The importance of self-image in the business world" or "Best vacation destinations for a nature-filled getaway" Publishers set a fee (currently there’s a range of $16 to $100). Then Helium writers submit pieces, the publisher selects its fave and the piece is bought. Helium takes a 20% fee of the total paid by the publisher as its cut. Helium provides a standard freelance contract, further smoothing the buy/sell transaction.
So far writers’ incomes are small: "A handful have made thousands of dollars, hundreds are making hundreds and and tens of thousands less than a hundred," says Ranalli.
There’s a community section of course, and overall the functionality looks well-thought-out and works well.
So for any of us who have ever bought or sold freelance pieces, we can see the potential value here. It’s kind of like Mochila’s web-enabled syndication system. It’s well-thought-out, taking what people do in the terrestrial world and using web tools to simplify and expedite it.
The issue of course in creating any marketplace — the issue that Mochila and Helium have — is matching up the supply and demand. It’s much easier — though it’s taken both sites lots of hard work — to build up the supply side. Those who produce content, major publishers or in lonely laptoppers, see the value in getting their stuff in front of lots more potential buyers, without having to indulge in old-world, one-to-one pitching. The issue is on the demand side.
Buyers are always slower to embrace new marketplaces, no matter how well thought out. Helium’s initial list of Marketplace publishers is small, about a dozen (as it comes out of beta) with little-known companies represented, like Travel Planning Guide or Liberty in Homeschooling. Growing that list and getting bigger titles — and bigger fees — is the big challenge.
Quality of course is another concern. "Of the first 100,000 [contributors], thousands of them should have their computers removed," acknowledges the ceo.
I talked to Mark Ranali about the other uses of Helium, how it could work a couple of other ways. And that’s where it gets interesting for news sites.
One idea is a "closed community" version of the site. That’s being tested as Boston Now — a start-up free daily in Boston (competing with Metro) — is piloting the use of the Helium system just for its own publication. So BostonNow gets all the functionality of Helium, but doesn’t have to play in the bigger sandbox. I can see lots of freelance-buying publications using that system, if it really streamlines their work.
Most interesting is that user-gen potential. How many daily newspaper and broadcast sites know they have to engage their communities, but are tiptoeing into the fray. A few have partnered with Pluck, some are trying a deal with Topix or using The Port. YourHub, a Scripps product, has been out there for awhile. These are all ways to engage, and they’ve had some successes, more in engagement (page views) than in making money.
Further, local news sites realize there should be a way to get their readers providing more and more content for them, especially the local-local stuff their (declining number of) reporters don’t want to cover. The proverbial chicken-dinner news.
Well, what if news sites use the Helium tools — probably private-branded — to create a local meritocratic community of community writers? Let the writers rate each other, let the best rise to the top, and harvest it for online, and sometimes print (reverse publishing) use. It could be a self-perpeutating system, with some small care and feeding.
The payoff for that care and feeding could be large. The payoff for the community contributors could certainly be recogntion, but smart publishers could add icing on the cake, paying the best community contributors (as determined by the community), probably even getting sponsoring advertisers to provide the "pay" in local goods and services. Just an idea, but one that I think speaks directly to this time and place in local news site publishing.