The Economist looks at the rise of the content farm, places like Demand Media that produce material based on what algorithms tell it users are interested in.

It has a look, too, at AOL's recent transition to a service with more original content --- although it won't lump it into the content farm category.

The challenge, the newsmagazine notes, is that the business model for online journalism is still elusive. Services like Demand Media are paying contributors to produce what people want and attaching a value to that content which ought to grow in time.

The trouble, as commentators note in the piece, is that it can flood the Internet with mediocre material.