A HYBRID APPROACH TO GEOLOGY ON THE WEB

Geology-related websites fall into one of a few categories: government/academic, resource industries, specialized services, education/hobbyists, and blogs. About.com began in 1997 with a different premise--that a group of passionate experts could collect enough readers that advertisers would pay to reach them. This model matched nothing else on the Web, but it may be fruitfully considered as a hybrid of all the foregoing categories. Over the last ten years, being the "geology guide" for About.com has been a series of responses and adaptations to Web events: the dot-com bubble and crash, the spread of broadband and multimedia, the emergence of today's blogs, and the rise of Google and Wikipedia among others. Search-engine optimization, templatized content, links and tags, and unprecedented knowledge of reader behavior all present the writer with challenge and often enrichment. Yet what the public wants to know has not changed, and what it needs to know grows ever more crucial.