Who remembers when this site got started? It was created by one of NC State's professors, for those that didn't know. It's still a great site, but laden with ads ... will be interesting to see what Discovery does. Hopefully they don't mess it up.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/14/discovery-networks-acquires-how-stuff-works-for-250-million/

Quote :

"Discovery Acquires How Stuff Works For $250 Million According to a Wall Street Journal report, Discovery plans to use the site “as the cornerstone of an effort to bring its vast library of video content to the Web.” Discovery previously acquired environmentally focused blog TreeHugger.com for $10 million in August. How Stuff Works is a long standing provider of edutainment content on the web. The site was founded in 1998 by former North Carolina State University professor Marshall Brain, took venture capital at the height of the first web boom in 1999 and was acquired by the Convex Group in 2002. According to Alexa, How Stuff Works has passed its glory days of popularity, having peaked in 2005 and declined in traffic since then, however the site still ranks in the top 2000 sites online. (Ed.’s note: comScore shows HowStuffWorks with 3.9 million unique U.S. visitors in September, up 74 percent from a year ago, and with 18 million page views, up 40 percent)."

[Edited on October 15, 2007 at 3:03 PM. Reason : link]

10/15/2007 3:02:10 PM

yeah, i used this site extensively back in 1999-2000. Back then, it was small enough that you could read basically all of the old articles, and stay up to date whenever a new article was released. I went to a small lecture Marshall Brain gave probably in 2001, or maybe in 2002 right after it was bought the first time. He is a fun guy. Says he started the site when he had an office in Leazar Hall that was overflowing with machines and gadgets that he took apart all the time. Then I believe when he incorporated, the main howstuffworks.com office was on Centennial.

I recall that after it was bought the first time, the navigation and overall look of the site went to shit, so I stopped visiting it. I see now the front page has been updated again, but it's still way too cluttered and "commercial" feeling. I also stopped reading it when they started running out of mechanical and physical objects like engines and computers, and started writing esoteric stuff like "how psychology works" or "how advertising works"

Maybe Discovery will do some good with all the data. They still have the best animations I've seen of things like internal combustion engines.

I imagine Brain gave up the rights to it when he sold it the first time in 02? Probably won't be making much/any money off of this acquisition?

10/15/2007 3:24:49 PM

Discovery should be good for the direction of the company. I worked there for a couple years ('99 - '01) during school -- amazing experience. When Convex bought HSW and moved the operation to Atlanta, things went way downhill. The idea went from "How can we create cool new content every single day" to "What can we do with all this content we have and maybe we'll do something new every month or two".

Anyway, could go on for hours about the company. But Marshall still remains one of the most interesting people I've ever met. If you ever get a chance to talk with him don't pass it up.

^ -- The main offices WERE in face on Centennial for a bit. TINY TINY office. Eventually we outgrew that space and moved over to Dillard Drive in Cary (right beside Home Depot - near where Epic Games offices are now)

10/15/2007 8:13:05 PM

one of my professors gave us a how stuff works link for marketing segmentation or market planning...whichever one it was...that might be why it got so many more page views...


where is the top 2000 list? i heard tww was a pretty traveled website in 2004

10/15/2007 8:22:13 PM

alexa.com ...

Right now, according to compete.com, tww is #112,340

10/16/2007 9:16:32 AM