About.com went public under a different name: The Mining Company. Scott Kurnit's New York startup hired hundreds of part-time experts, called guides, and gave each one a topic to cover, from gardening to tax law. Each guide ran a small site that pointed readers to the best of the web and added original articles. When the company sold shares in March 1999, search engines still struggled to tell good pages from bad. A human who knew the subject looked like the answer.

Mining the Web by Hand

Kurnit, a veteran of online services, founded the company in 1996. By its IPO it ran more than 600 GuideSites. The guides were independent contractors spread across more than 40 states and 18 countries, and each went through a 16-week training program. The company sold ads across the network. More guides meant more topics, and more topics meant more readers arriving from search engines and staying to browse.

A New Name and New Owners

MiningCo.com priced its IPO at $25 a share in March 1999 on Nasdaq under the ticker MINE. A few months later it renamed itself About.com. In 2001 the magazine publisher Primedia bought it. The New York Times Company bought About.com in 2005, and IAC bought it in 2012. IAC later broke the site into separate brands under a new company called Dotdash.

Cover: Eastern Pennsylvania Coal Miner, Lewis Wickes Hine. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a miner (The Mining Company).