to generate titles, then posts the titles to a screened pool of freelance writers or video creators. The list of available titles used to be over 100,000 but was severely curtailed in the second half of 2011. Typically, writers can claim up to ten titles and then have a week to submit the articles. Format and length are dictated by guidelines. Submitted articles go to an editor (also a freelancer) who can either clean them up or request a rewrite. After writers submit a revised article it is either accepted or rejected. Payment via PayPal is twice a week. Demand Media's acquisition of Pluck.com in 2008 gave it the means to provide specialized content and social media platforms to any website. The content comes with advertising attached. The website owners get free content for their sites and split the advertising revenue with Demand Media. Stock offer In April 2010, Financial Times reported that Demand Media was planning an initial public offering of shares (IPO), which would mean any acquisitions would be out of the question. IPO filing was completed in August of that year. Shares were at first expected to be offered in December 2010, in a tender that would give Demand Media a value of some $1.5 billion. However, as a result of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation regarding the company's novel accounting for "long-lived content", the pricing was delayed. On January 12, 2011, the company announced it would price its shares between $14 and $16 each, giving it a valuation of approximately $1.3 billion. Questions were raised about Demand Media's claim to be profitable, given that its IPO filings that had reported losses for the past several years. On December 14, 2020 the company announced the closing of its underwritten public offering of 8,216,750 shares of its common stock, including full exercise of the underwriter’s option to purchase additional shares of common stock, at a public offering price of $4.20 per share, receiving an aggregate net proceeds from the offering of approximately $32.0 million. Criticism Demand Media has attracted criticism from Internet watchdogs for being one of the largest buyers of articles and videos, often commissioning low-quality articles to cut costs in an effort to mass-produce articles and videos to appear highly in Google search results, purchasing thousands of search-engine-driven content from low-paid freelancers to use on its websites to attract advertisers, such as Israeli startup (now