About.com
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| Founded | April 21, 1997 |
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| Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States |
| Owner | IAC |
| Founder(s) | Scott Kurnit |
| Key people | Barry Diller Matthew Burris (President) Neil Vogel (CEO) Scott Kim (COO) |
| Industry | Internet |
| Website | about |
| Alexa rank |
 307 (September 2016[update]) |
About.com (formerly MiningCo.com) is an American Internet-based network of content that publishes articles and videos about various subjects on its "topic sites". of which there are nearly 1,000. It is operated by About, Inc. (formerly The Mining Company, MiningCo.com, Inc., and About.com, Inc.). The website competes with other online resource sites and encyclopedias and, for March 2014, 61,428,000 unique visitors were registered by comScore for About.com, making it the 16th-most-visited online property for that month. As of August 2012, About.com is the property of IAC, owner of Ask.com and numerous other online brands, and its revenue is generated by advertising.
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. The original goal was to maintain 1,800 topic areas, but after five years of operation, this number was reduced to around 700.
The company changed its name to "About Inc.", and the website address from "miningco.com" to "about.com" in May 1999. The company was acquired by Primedia, Inc. in 2000 through a deal valued at US$690 million, whereby Primedia swapped 45.2 million shares for About, Inc.'s 18.1 million shares. At the time of the acquisition announcement, About Inc. was measured at US$133 million in cash and no debt (Sept. 30, 2000), while the Media Metrix company tallied 21 million unique monthly visitors—making it the seventh-most-visited "network of sites" at the time—a network of over 700 topic sites, sorted into 36 areas and 50,000 subjects, and approximately 4,000 advertisers. Following the purchase, which was finalized in the first quarter of 2001, the combined company was called "Primedia" and Kurnit remained chief executive officer (CEO).
In February 2005, The New York Times Company (Times Co.) announced it was buying About.com, a purchase that was completed in the first half of the year for US$410 million.Google and Yahoo were reportedly among the other bidders. Following the Times Co. acquisition, Peter C. Horan was appointed as About Inc.'s president and CEO, but he was soon replaced by Scott Meyer in May 2005.
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