Demand Media reports first profits in 2010 results

Online publisher Demand Media turned a profit last year for the first time in the group's five-year history.

Co-founder Shawn Colo told the Financial Times Digital Media Conference in London today that the group was in the black for the fourth quarter of 2010.

Demand Media was founded in 2006 and floated earlier this year, with a valuation of more than $1.5 billion (£920 million). The network claims 100 million unique users a month and employs about 50 editorial staff and hundreds of freelances.

Shares in Demand Media took a hit last week after Google changed its search algorithm to weed out sites that it considers to publish low-quality content.

Colo dismissed claims that the group's "content farm" approach to publishing was "polluting Google".

"Anytime you do anything that's different or innovative it takes time for people to really get their heads around it," he said. "[Content farm] is a term that journalists have used to try to understand what we do.

"There's a real gap and a real need for companies like Demand Media to be able to produce content at scale that people want to consume.

"If Google said tomorrow we're blocking this particular domain from the internet that would have an extremely big effect on our business but Google's ambition is the same as ours: providing consumers with a very consistent experience."

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