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SCOTT KURNT WAS UNEMPLOYED AND SITTING AT HIS KITCHEN table in 1996 when he got the idea for a niche-driven Web site so rich in content people couldn't stay away from it.
He got hooked on it himself that day, and eventually created About.com . Today Media Metrix rates it as one of the Internet's 10 most-visited sites, frequented by about 60 million consumers worldwide who are hooked on its 700 niche topics.
When Primedia agreed to buy it last fall in an all-stock deal valued at $690 million, About.com was on target to turn a profit early this year. Meant to be Primedia's major Internet play, it will be a merger linking one of the biggest publishers of niche magazine titles with the Web's biggest developer of niche content. The deal should close in late February.
The key to About.com's success may lie in the bare simplicity of Mr. Kurnit's original idea: one site guiding consumers to hundreds of microsites, each drilling deep into specific topics ranging from garlic to golf.
While others may have had the same epiphany at the time when the Internet was beginning to explode, few were equipped to execute the plan like Mr. Kurnit,...