The Mining Company was the original name of the web portal About.com. The site was launched on April 21st 1997 by Scott Kurnit , owner of General Internet . 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 40 percent of the advertising revenue generated within their topic area. The Mining Company also employed around 50 full time staff for administration, advertising sales and the overall site design work. On May 17th 1999 the company changed its name, and the web site address miningco.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.

External links

• About.com History
• 1997 Wired Article