Associated Content

Yahoo! Voices, formerly Associated Content (AC), was a division of Yahoo! that focused on online publishing. Yahoo! Voices distributed a large variety of writing through its website and content partners, including Yahoo! News. In early December 2011, its owners Yahoo! announced a major shakeup involving the introduction of a new service, Yahoo! Voices, which would replace the Associated Content site and take on the bulk of its content, while some 75,000 items would be retired under the new site's more stringent content submission rules. On July 2, 2014, Yahoo! announced that it would be shutting down Yahoo! Voices on July 31st and the Yahoo! Contributor Network at the end of August 2014.

Associated Content was started in January 2005 by Luke Beatty. They hired their CTO in March 2006, Sonu Kansal. It was based in Denver, Colorado, with business development, sales and community offices in New York City.

In April 2009, Associated Content hired a new CEO, Patrick Keane, formerly of CBS Interactive and Google and closed a $6 million Series C round of funding from Softbank Capital and Canaan Partners. Three weeks after the funding announcement, Associated Content reorganized and laid off 5 employees.

On May 19, 2010, Yahoo! announced that it would purchase Associated Content for $90 million.

On December 1, 2011, "Yahoo!" announced a new service, Yahoo! Voices, which "replaces Associated Content as Yahoo! Contributor Network’s official digital library." In announcing the new service, Yahoo! claimed more stringent submission guidelines would be used in accepting new content and that the company would delete over 75,000 pieces that they deemed to be "inactive and outdated." The new service aimed to provide "more than two million pieces of original content, spanning thousands of different topics, created by more than 500,000 individual experts and enthusiasts."

Yahoo! announced on July 2, 2014 that it would shut down Yahoo! Voices and Yahoo! Contributor Network on July 31, 2014.

The Internet Archive is integrating deleted Yahoo! Voices content into the Wayback Machine.

In addition to text content (articles), AC featured categories for video, audio, and slide shows along with an online community where users shared their expertise, network and voice opinions.

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