| About. com | |
|---|---|
 | |
| URL | www.about.com |
| Commercial? | yes |
| Type of site | online resource |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | The New York Times Company |
| Launched | March 12, 1997 |
| Current status | active |
About. Uniform Resource Locator is an URI which also specifies where the identified resource is available and the protocol for retrieving it An internet encyclopedia project is a large database of useful information accessible via World Wide Web In the Philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a Language that is spoken or written in phonemic-alphabetic or phonemically-related The New York Times Company ( is an American media company It is Events 538 - Witiges, king of the Ostrogoths ends his siege of Rome and retreats to Ravenna, leaving Year 1997 ( MCMXCVII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1997 Gregorian calendar com is an online source for original information and advice, and is among the top 15 US Websites (Nielsen Online Spring 2008). It is written in English, and is aimed primarily at North Americans. It is owned by The New York Times Company [1]. The New York Times Company ( is an American media company It is
The site’s content is dynamic, attempting to keep up with new information and changing consumer interests. About. com is divided into topic sites, which are grouped into channels and cover subjects from home repair to pediatrics and model railroading and weather. Home repair involves the diagnosis and resolution of problems in a home and is related to home maintenance to avoid such problems Pediatrics (also spelled paediatrics) is the branch of Medicine that deals with the medical care of Infants Children and Adolescents Model railroading (US or Railway modelling (UK Australia and Canada is a Hobby in which Rail transport systems are modeled at a reduced scale The weather is a set of all the phenomena occurring in a given Atmosphere at a given Time. The content is written by a network of over 700 journalists, called Guides, who have some experience in their particular fields. Each Guide looks after one subject and is the exclusive writer for that subject. Content on the site can take the form of articles, online courses, interactive quizzes, videos and so forth.
Guides are compensated with a base salary plus bonuses for increased traffic; according to About. com, several guides are averaging over $100,000 per year, although the exact number is not disclosed. [2]
Contents |
Content
The Guide's sites consist of articles or commentaries written by the Guides. Some sites have dictionaries, how-to lessons, and free eCourses. For example, the sites on major European languages have comprehensive lessons illustrated by audio files recorded by the Guides themselves. Most of the many Languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European Language family.
Each Guide's site has at least one forum, provided at the Advanced level (with HTML capability and uploading), for registered users. Site visitors may subscribe to free email newsletters for each site. Some Guides participate daily at the forum. About. com employs strict editorial guidelines for all of the content that appears on its site. All content on About. com is overseen by a team of editors, who review materials for relevance and accuracy. New health content on About. com is reviewed and checked for accuracy by a group of physicians and a medical director, which includes 20 M. Ds.
While About. com's Guide selection stresses "expert" backgrounds, critics say it does so at the expense of writing proficiency. Many guides, in fact, have little writing experience, setting them apart from journalists.
History
About. com was originally founded in 1996 as The Mining Company. The site was launched on April 21, 1997 by Scott Kurnit, owner of General Internet, Bill Day, and a group of other entrepreneurs in New York City. Events 753 BC - Romulus and Remus found Rome ( traditional date) Year 1997 ( MCMXCVII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1997 Gregorian calendar The City of New York [3] The original goal was to maintain 1,800 topic areas, but after five years of operation, this number was eventually reduced to 700. The original business plan offered expert Guides a minimum rate of $250 a month or one-third of the advertising revenue generated within their topic area. A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals the reasons why they are believed attainable and the plan for reaching those goals Advertising is a form of Communication that typically attempts to persuade potential Customers to Purchase or to consume more of a particular Brand The Mining Company also employed around 50 full time staff for administration, advertising sales and the overall site design work.
The company changed its name to About, Inc. on May 17, 1999, and the Web site address miningco. Events 1521 - Edward Stafford 3rd Duke of Buckingham, is executed for Treason. Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) com, to About. com. The renaming was partly to broaden the appeal of the site and the instant brand equity during the Internet bubble of using a simple word followed by dot com as both site address and company name. Brand equity refers to the Marketing effects or outcomes that accrue to a product with its brand name compared with those that would accrue if the same product did not have the The " dot-com bubble " (or sometimes the " IT bubble " was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 (with a climax on March 10 The company was acquired by PRIMEDIA in 2000 in a deal that valued About at $690 million. PRIMEDIA Inc,, formerly known as K-III Communications, is the #1 print and online publisher and distributor of advertising-supported consumer guides in the U In February 2005, The New York Times Company announced that it was buying About. The New York Times Company ( is an American media company It is com, a purchase that was completed in the first half of the year for $410 million. Google along with Yahoo!, Ask.com, and AOL were reportedly among the other bidders. Google Inc is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online Askcom is a Search engine. It is a business division of IAC Search & Media, and was founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen
It eliminated over 40% of its topic-sites in 2002. Most of the eliminated sites are not merged, and their contents are no longer accessible to the general public. However, the rights to the material remained with the original authors and some of it has reappeared on other websites.
In 2002, 77 former and current About. com Guides filed a class-action suit in New York against PRIMEDIA. The complaint was that labor laws were violated and contracts breached. The case was still ongoing as of March 2006. Stories without links will be removed. News stories must be in English
In May 2005, The New York Times Company named Scott Meyer, president & CEO of About. A chief executive officer ( CEO) or chief executive is typically the highest-ranking corporate officer ( executive) or administrator com.
As of December 2006, About. com was one of the 15 largest sites on the Web and its third-quarter revenues increased 29. 3 percent to $18. 3 million compared to $14. 2 during the same period last year. Year to date, About. com’s revenue’s were up 56% through September.
On May 7, 2007, About. com acquired ConsumerSearch for $33 Million. ConsumerSearch is an English-language search engine for Consumer product Reviews, plus a Database of reports on consumer products and services published [4]
In January 2008, the site's first fully-owned foreign venture, the China-based Abang. com, came out of stealth mode. This marked the first full-owned editorial product by The New York Times to enter China. About. com said it would obey all laws and sidestepped the issue of censorship by saying that the chosen topics were not controversial to the government of China. [5]
The domain about. com attracted at least 448 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study. Competecom is a United States Web traffic analysis service that publishes the approximate number of U [6]
See also
- Knol a similar Google intiative. Knol is a Google project which aims to include user-written articles on a range of topics Google Inc is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online
References
- ^ Miguel Helft. "Wikipedia Competitor Being Tested by Google", The New York Times, 2007-12-15. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 533 - Byzantine general Belisarius defeats the Vandals, commanded by King Gelimer, at the Battle of Retrieved on 2008-01-25. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 41 - After a night of negotiation Claudius is accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate ""(. . . ) and About. com, which is owned by The New York Times Company""
- ^ Guide compensation page on About. com
- ^ 1997 Wired Article
- ^ About.com buys ConsumerSearch from The New York Times
- ^ About.com launches in China
- ^ About.com attracts 448m visitors online
External links
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