ABOUT.com is the perfect metaphor for the Internet and the complex new economy it has created.
The New York-based directory service uses real live humans to maintain a network of 650 expert sites. Any time you want to look up a special subject, these Guides are waiting for you.
Say you get a craving to know something about fly-fishing, or Aston Martins, or you have an urban legend you want to verify, or are looking for a geological map of Saudi Arabia. The idea is you turn to http://www.about.com to begin your search, instead of Yahoo! or HotBot or Alta Vista.
You can then read up on the articles written or aggregated by that particular Guide, each of whom is required to maintain up-to-date sites. Then, if you want more information, you can e-mail a question to the Guide, who will usually get back to you within a few hours.
About.com has grown steadily since its launch two years ago as the Mining Company. (The name came from the idea of data-mining, but no one got it.)
Theoretically, the more Guides who sign up, the more indispensible About.com will become, able to edge out the robots and spiders of traditional search engine territory. As of last month, it was up to No. 15 in the Media Metrix chart.
The idea of using human brainpower instead of memory chips is seductive.
Internet companies are not judged on their revenues or executives but on their business models and how much cocktail party chatter they generate. About.com’s model is unique, and as CEO Scott Kurnit points out, it’s already too late for someone else to come along and copy it.
“Critical mass” is a concept that haunts all New Media companies, which is why they’re all blowing their venture capital on offline marketing, just to be first over the hill.
What makes the About.com model fascinating is its flaws. For now, Guides are accessible, but if they ever become stars – and the William Morris Agency has been retained to sniff out mediagenic Guides and get them book deals and TV spots – they will have more traffic than they can handle.
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