No demand for Demand Media

The dolorous fate of Demand Media:

Changes in Google’s search algorithms have twice hammered the young company in recent years, leaving its few brands that managed to get significant marketplace traction, including eHow.com and Livestrong, hemorrhaging traffic.

Now Demand’s focus is on spinning off the only healthy component of its business — domain registration — while trying to motivate its content brands’ rapidly eroding audience to spend money on its growing collection of unproven e-commerce ventures.

Live by the algorithm, die by the algorithm.