HubPages is an American online publishing platform developed by Paul Edmondson and 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 "TheMaven, Inc." acquired Hubpages. Hubpages was a startup that struggled for over 12 years until its acquisition by Maven. The company is headquartered in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

History

The site launched on August 5, 2006, funded by a US$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 technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

and were part of the startup

MongoMusic ''MSN Music'' was a part of MSN's web services. It delivered music news, music videos, spotlights on new music, artist information, and live performances of artists. The website also served as a digital music store from 2004 to 2008. History ...

. 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.

User information and features

Users

Hubpages does not publish official user stats on its website. According to

Business Wire Business Wire is an American company that disseminates full-text press releases from thousands of companies and organizations worldwide to news media, financial markets, disclosure systems, investors, information web sites, databases, bloggers, ...

, the platform had about 35 million monthly visitors in January 2018. In March 2018

released another report according to which, the platform had about 43 million monthly visitors.

Memberships

Hubpages unlike its competitor

Medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation * Medium bomber, a class of war plane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium ...

is not a subscription-based platform and users can become a member free of cost.

Partner Program

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 no longer.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official site
Online mass media companies of the United States Knowledge markets Internet properties established in 2006