HubPages is an American user-generated
online publishing platform developed by Paul Edmondson that was launched in 2006. HubPages acquired its main competitor,
Squidoo
Squidoo was a revenue-sharing article-writing site. Articles were called "lenses". In 2010, the site consisted of 1.5 million lenses . On August 15, 2014, founder Seth Godin announced that HubPages had acquired Squidoo.
History
Development st ...
, in 2014. In 2018 Seattle-based content company The Maven, Inc. acquired HubPages, and went on to rebrand as The Arena Group in 2021. The company is headquartered in
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
.
Though the content is user-generated and owned, the editorial staff and engineers are responsible for managing, editing, moderating, and publishing articles across the two dozen network sites. The network sites focus on niche content that ranges from topics like automobiles and travel to beauty and pets.
History
The site launched on August 5, 2006, funded by a
US$
The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...
2 million investment from
Hummer Winblad. The three founders, Paul Edmonson, Paul Deeds, and Jay Reitz, are former employees of
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
and were part of the startup
MongoMusic.
It raised $8 million between 2007–2008 and has not been able to raise any since and struggled for the next ten years.
In 2011, traffic to revenue-sharing sites, including HubPages, was slashed following changes to
Google's algorithm ("Panda").
Over the ensuing years, HubPages made strenuous efforts to recover from the setback, while most of its competitors gave up and closed their doors. In 2014 HubPages acquired its largest competitor, Squidoo, in a friendly takeover.
In 2016, HubPages announced it was moving from a single-site to a multi-site structure with the introduction of separate "vertical sites". Each site contains articles covering a group of broadly related subjects.
In 2018, it was acquired by Maven which gave investors a mild payout.
Memberships
Unlike its competitor
Medium, HubPages is not a subscription-based platform and creating a user account can be done for free. Members post informational articles and earn a share of the income from those articles through the HubPages Earnings Program. At one time, having an AdSense account was a prerequisite for being a member but this is no longer the case.
References
{{reflist
External links
Official site
Online mass media companies of the United States
Knowledge markets
Internet properties established in 2006