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"The web is a big, constantly changing place that \u2014 for many \u2014 requires instructions. Startup Grovo launched a site in October that offers these instructions with high-quality, free videos about popular web apps like Mint, Amazon and Twitter. \nOn Tuesday, the site announced a redesign that will put its focus on quality content to the test. The new site is launching with Grovo Premium, a business lesson section that will require a subscription of either $19 per month or $190 per year to access. Users will still be able to access 50% of Grovo content for free, but the other 50% will now live behind a paywall. \nWith competition from free content on YouTube and sites like eHow, paid content could be a hard sell. CEO Jeff Fernandez, who hired an in-house professional team to create the 500 videos currently in the site's library, is banking on a niche expertise and high video quality to persuade users that the content is worth the bill. \n\"We are hyper-focused,\" he explains. \"We only cover the Internet. And everything we do is written from scratch, professionally produced and voiced over by a professional.\"\nObviously, this strategy is a departure from most user-generated YouTube content. Similarly, sites like eHow don't rely on an in-house team, but rather a large pool of freelancers, to create videos on just about anything that a search engine will send traffic to. \nGrovo's one- to two- minute videos come with study tools like quizzes, takeaway points, and glossary terms. The site also recommends appropriate lessons based on what a user has already explored, and logs user activity for future reference. For people who want to use the web better, it's clear Grovo is a valuable education tool. But whether they'll pay for it is another question (note, for instance, the news media's lack of success with paywalls).\nBut even if the paywall doesn't pay off, it won't necessarily be the end of the road for Grovo. The privately funded company is already negotiating partnerships with other websites that are interested in developing how-to guides to offer their users, which could help foot the bill for the quality content and add to Grovo's free library at the same time.\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, Vladru"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/03/01/grovo/>