Crypto: Job Opportunity

[Carol Anne Cypherpunk <carolann@censored.org>]

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The Mining Co. (http://www.miningco.com) is looking
for "siteguides".

There will surely be a guide needed for cryptography.

Pay is commensurate with hit volume, but it isn't too shabby,
at about 3K per month after about a year.

There is the original posting from Sideman's Online Insider following
this post to acquaint you with the particulars.

Good Luck to whomever from this list (for I'm sure someone will) 
takes the aformentioned position. I would, but I'm applying for a 
different site in the Culture/Beliefs section.

On one other note, the PGP Plugin for Eudora is MARVELOUS!
THIS I can even teach a clueless newbie!

Carol Anne Cypherpunk
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==========================================================================
                Seidman's Online Insider - Vol. 4, Issue 6
     Brought to you by NetGuide Magazine< http://www.netguide.com >
==========================================================================

Copyright (C) 1997 Robert Seidman and CMP Media Inc.  All rights reserved.
May be reproduced in any medium for noncommercial purposes as long as
attribution is given.


Kurnit is Back and Mining the Internet
======================================

  "Like Arnold, he'll be back. I've been listening to what
he has to say for a long time. If you listen to him, you'll
hear how the Web is the way and that the proprietary services
are a dead model. If you listen between-the-lines, you'll hear
a modified version of that vision. A best of both worlds
vision. You'll hear that he wants to develop easy to use,
functional services on the Web. Like easy to use chat.
Like easy to use bulletin boards.

Like AOL, but on the Web."

-Thoughts on Scott Kurnit in a piece regarding the failed MCI/News Corp
joint venture from Seidman's Online Insider for the Week Ending February
9, 1996.

Kurnit's back, and almost exactly a year to the day since the clip above
was written.  On Monday February 10, the new company Kurnit founded, The
Mining Company, will announce their plans to basically build AOL on the
Web.  I'm not sure about the choice of February 10 as the day to announce
this.  It is a day with special significance for me.

On February 10, 1972 I had a dilemma.  I was hungry for breakfast and
wanted some cereal.  I had cereal, but no milk.  So I called my mom at
work and asked her if I could run across the street to the convenience
store.  My mom said no because "the street" was more like a highway and
because I was 9 years old.

"You'll get hit by a car," my mom said.  As you might imagine, I went
anyway.  And as you also might have guessed by now my mother was right,
except no car was good enough for me.  I had to face off with a
ten-wheeler (it was an Amoco < http://www.amoco.com > Oil tanker.)
Twenty-two stitches in the head, a healed broken wrist and 25 years later,
I'm still hanging in there.  I don't remember anything about it, including
seeing the truck.  I've always wondered if I was pushed.  What I do
remember was waking up in the ambulance with quite a headache.  But since
then, seeing how I lived and all, I've always viewed February 10 as a GOOD
day.

The Mining Company may not be a truck setting its sights on running down
AOL or even other Web content aggregators (even to some degree NetGuide
Live), but it is an interesting model.

*What It Is*

In effect, The Mining Company wants to be the biggest online service on
the Web, ultimately offering 4,000 special-interest areas in an
integrated, easy-to-use interface.  Whether you call these special areas
channels, departments or categories -- it's all the same thing.  Kurnit
wants to capitalize on the fact that it takes too long to find what you
want on the Net.  He wants to put it all in one place with one consistent
interface so that you can easily find what you're looking for and interact
with those who have common interests.

Each "channel" will have content, bulletin boards, online chats, links to
other good stuff on the Web in the particular area of interest.  You'll
also be able to search a site via Verity's search engine or search the
entire Net via Digital's Alta Vista.

While they are currently testing another chat product, they have decided
to move to the iChat chat client.

In the test system I had access to, the bulletin board system was very
easy to use, but painfully slow.  I'll cut them some slack since they are
still in beta, but users will need to be able to move around the boards
quicker than what I experienced or they will likely be put off.

*And Now for Something Really Different*

When Kurnit first ran the vision by me a couple of weeks ago, I said "To
me it seems like this is..."

"AOL on the Web," Kurnit interrupted.

"Not exactly," I said, "It's like AOL on the Web with a hint of Amway
thrown in."

One of the problems with providing editorial context for the Net is that
it winds up costing a lot of money.  Kurnit's previous venture with
MCI/Newscorp was iGuide.  They built a great guide to the Net, but
ultimately they scaled it back to just become a guide to entertainment on
the Net.  You've read the reports all over the place about scaled back
editorial efforts and rightsizing.  Good editorial doesn't come cheap, at
least not when done traditionally.

The Mining Company isn't going after the traditional model of hiring a
bunch of full-time editors and bringing them in house.  They plan to use
folks already out there on the Net.

Once upon a time while I was at IBM, I helped recruit Chris Locke, of
MecklerWeb notoriety away from the MCI/News Corp effort Kurnit was
running.

While there are many things Chris and I do not agree on, I was very much
in synch with Chris when it came to the idea of communities of interest on
the Web.  Give remote people the tools to produce the content, Locke would
say, and you'd be able to easily build hundreds if not thousands of
communities of interest very inexpensively.  Locke who is now with a
hardware company in Colorado will no doubt take interest in what Kurnit
and the gang at The Mining Company are up to, because they are all about
providing the tools to produce the communities of interest inexpensively!
If your chosen as one of its forum moderators (they call them Guides),
you'll be given access to all the tools you need to build a site on the
service.

Now you may be thinking, "Ah, GeoCities does that already!"  GeoCities
< http://www.geocities.com > gives free web pages and is organized around
certain communities of interest.  But their homesteader program is not
about setting up an all-encompassing online service.  And while it is a
great place to create a free web page, there's no real business model for
the person creating the page.  If you build a great site there, GeoCities
gets the revenue on all the traffic that goes there.  Because it has a lot
of traffic, GeoCities can send some traffic to your Web site.  But in the
end, the model for GeoCities is one to give you a free page on the Web.
This is good for you if you're just in it for the fun of it, and good for
GeoCities too.   I think GeoCities is great, but if I am looking for
something in particular, I wouldn't think to look there first.  The Mining
Company wants to create a space that no matter what it is you hope to
find, you'll look there first.

*They Call them Guides*

The Mining Company wants to create quality communities of interest.  And
for every community (channel) created, there will be a unique
moderator/editor.  The Mining Company calls them Guides.  It's looking for
more than just a few quality folks to become Guides and form their
service.  Starting Monday, they will begin accepting applications to
become Guides on the  service. There could be multiple sites about the
same thing during the start-up phase, but  ultimately it will be whittled
down to one Guide/site per special interest.

To ensure quality, they'll be a review committee set-up to make sure
quality standards are up to snuff, including some folks from the community
of Guides.  Kurnit believes between that, the natural inclination for
other Guides to point out areas of, um, weakness and user feedback,
they'll have a good handle on quality.

Additionally, there will be some in-house editorial to oversee major
groupings (like Technology, Personal Finance, etc.)

"The Mining Company is dedicated to serving the needs of its Guides and
users," said Kurnit.  "We give the tools and support to the Guides to help
users find what they want, trust what they find, and connect them with the
most valuable sites on the Net and with other interesting people."

"This model is now only possible because of the team effort at The Mining
Company to integrate the latest improvements in Internet technology and
the newly identified needs of users and independent Web producers," adds
Kurnit.


*Getting the Guides*

Will it be easy to get the ultimately thousands of Guides necessary to run
this service?

"How much talent is out there," asks Kurnit.   "We look at the thousands
of pages out there on AOL, GeoCities, etc., and the rest of the Internet,"
Kurnit said.  "All we think we need to get is 2%-3% of the talent pool."

In certain areas it will likely be very competitive.  Everyone will want
to get there first.

"First there's the application process," said Scott Kurnit in a phone
Interview.  "You're going to show us your bio and you're going to write
some columns so we can see your writing style.  If you make the grade, you
make it to our orientation process," Kurnit said.

The Mining Company places its focus on training the Guides and giving them
the tools they need to make a site.   If you "make the grade" you
basically have 3 weeks (2 of which are the "orientation") to get a site
up-and-running on the service.

"The fact is, if you can't get it done in a reasonable time then you
probably don't have the dedication or time to get it done," says Kurnit.

Just how much time will it take for Guides to put together sites?  "We're
not looking for anyone to quite their day jobs," said Kurnit.  "We're
looking at about a 10 hour a week commitment to produce the sites."  But
Kurnit also says  that though there will be only one Guide per site, the
Guides will be able to line up assistants.



*What's in it for You?*

So why The Mining Company then?   Why not GeoCities or doing it on your
own?  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  One is the promise of
exposure, the other is the promise of MONEY.

There is a model here, especially if you're not looking to quit your day
job.  While I imagine it will have to shift its model somewhat, there are
some opportunities to make a buck or two for the Guides.  It might not be
much money, but if you're already throwing 10 hours or so a week towards
maintaining a Web page that lines up around a special interest or two, any
money is better than what you're probably getting now.

Basically, The Mining Company is looking to allocate 40% of all
advertising revenues back to the Guides themselves.  The real pool here is
30%, with the additional 10% being used for things like bonuses.  So, how
does it work?

Kurnit is looking to get quickly to a million or so page views a day (each
of the pages I saw had 2 advertisements.  By the end of the year, Kurnit
hopes to be in the 10 million - 15 million page views.  It sounds a little
ambitious, but if they're successful lining up quality Guides, it could
become a reality.  So let's say they're getting 5 million page views per
day.  Based on what I saw, that would net out to be about 300 million ads
running per month.

Lets say ad sales average out to $30/1000 (a $30 CPM).  Based on that,
you're looking at a cool $9 million a month in advertising revenue.  So
$3.6 million is in the Guide pool, but only $2.7 million is for the true
revenue split.  Now, let's say you're a Guide who got one-tenth of 1
percent of The Mining Company's overall traffic. You'd make a cool $2,700
a month for your efforts.  If you happen to be a guide in one of the
"killer categories" whether it be a parents site or a kids site or a
computing site, it's not unreasonable to think that you might get as much
as 1%.  That would be $27,000 per month!!

Some people will balk at the 40%-60% share, but I think that's pretty
fair.  Where I'd predict the model will have to change, however, is in the
cases where the cost per thousand (CPM) view being charged the advertisers
is much higher than the average of the overall site.  If the overall site
average is $30/1000, but your site is generating a CPM of around $90,
you're probably not going to want to be paid based on averages.

*Will it Work?*

In short, I think this could work quite nicely.  The premise of a front
door that links to content that is all packaged with a consistent look and
feel is a winning premise.   With AOL's recent move to flat-fee, one big
advantage a Net service has over a proprietary model like AOL is the
ability to create content far more easily and inexpensively. Much coverage
has been given this week regarding AOL beginning to charge its partners in
its Company Connection a $55,000 fee each year to participate.

Some in AOL are saying its reasonable since the areas amount to "free"
advertising for the companies, but realistically speaking, I think it is a
maintenance fee AOL is charging to offset the cost of dealing with these
forums.  I think it is reasonable to expect to see AOL begin to charge
similar fees for any content that isn't "must have" for them, now that the
hourly charges that once subsidized these areas are gone.  There is a cost
of throwing in-house support at these online areas and much of the cost is
due to the fact that it's a proprietary system.  Setting up new "forms"
and new looks just isn't easily accomplished by the content providers
themselves.  So, the timing may be good for The Mining Company.

There are at least two tricks Kurnit and Co. must pull off.  First, they
have to get the Guides.  That starts on Monday, when they begin accepting
applications.  The next will be to market the site in a way that gets
people to the front door.   Internet of the people, for the people and by
the people, it has a nice ring to it...  I'm sure we'll hear more about
this when the site officially launches in April.

For more info, check out < http://www.miningco.com >, sometime on Monday,
they will make a lot more information available there than the "coming
soon" that was there as of this writing.
Member Internet Society  - Certified BETSI Programmer  -  Webmistress
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Carol Anne Braddock (cab8)  carolann@censored.org   206.42.112.96
<a href="http://www.primenet.com/~carolab">My Homepage</a>
<a href="http://www.winternet.com/~drozone">The Cyberdoc</a>
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