What is the basic purpose of HowStuffWorks, and how does it differ from, say, Wikipedia or Encarta?
Jeff Arnold: Our goal is to satisfy curiosity on the web. HowStuffWorks is where people can come to pursue their curiosity, whether it be about products, everyday matters, obscure topics or news-related information. We differ from Wikipedia in that our information is professionally researched and edited; you can trust that it’s accurate. We differ from Encarta in that we add entertainment into our articles; we give them personality, versus just providing encyclopedic information. ER: You engineered the 2007 sale to Discovery Communications. What did HowStuffWorks and Discovery see in each other? Arnold: Discovery wanted to own curiosity across all formats, and they saw HowStuffWorks as already owning it online. We had the potential to be the cornerstone of Discovery’s digital media strategy. As for us, we realized that to take it to the next level, we needed video. We wanted to add Discovery’s great nonfiction video to our site. What we perfected after we bought HowStuffWorks, before t
