EHow

Coordinates	34°37′14″N58°32′21″N
Name	eHow.com
Logo
Url	www.ehow.com
Commercial	Yes
Type	Collaboration
Language	English
Registration	Yes
Owner	Demand Media, Inc.
Launch date	March 1999
Current status	Active

eHow is an online how-to guide with more than 1 million articles and 170,000 videos offering step-by-step instructions. eHow articles and videos are created by freelancers

Criticisms

Search engine Duck Duck Go's CEO Gabriel Weinberg has criticized eHow, along with other Demand Media websites, labeling the company a "content mill," because of the website's search engine driven content, article quality and low writer salaries. Duck Duck Go filters out eHow content because of Weinberg's perception that Demand Media produces low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google Searches for the purposes of promoting advertising.

Wired magazine has also criticized eHow and Demand Media, calling their content: "slapdash" and a "factory stamping out moneymaking content".

Wikipedia has blacklisted all eHow articles. An editor wishing to reference an eHow article will find this impossible unless the specific article is white-listed.

History

eHow.com was founded in March 1999. The company raised close to $30 million from venture capitalists, including Hummer Winblad, Media Technology Ventures, General Electric and Fingerhut. An editing team, led by Bill Marken (former editor in chief for Sunset Magazine) and Sharon Beaulaurier, hired 200 professional writers, and the company employed a 25-person engineering team. By 2001, eHow had created thousands of articles. The professional writing, combined with a TV and radio advertising campaign, briefly made eHow one of the Internet's top 10 news and information sites. Despite the popularity, eHow was not profitable and was forced to declare bankruptcy when funding ran out.

In 2001, IdeaExchange.com bought eHow out of bankruptcy with the hope of charging eHow's readers to access how-to instructions. eHow remained unprofitable and in early 2004, IdeaExchange sold eHow to Jack Herrick and Josh Hannah.

To keep costs low, Herrick and Hannah maintained eHow themselves with the assistance of one part-time software engineer. They restored content that had been lost during the bankruptcy and added improvements that made the site easier to use. In January 2005, they started a wiki-based companion site, wikiHow, which allowed both anonymous and registered users to create and modify articles. Between March 2004 and April 2006, eHow traffic increased from 250,000 visitors per month to more than 4 million visitors per month.

In May 2006, eHow was acquired by Demand Media while Herrick and Hannah retained control of wikiHow.

In September 2006, eHow launched weHow.com, which allowed registered users to create new how-to articles (eHow articles continued to be written exclusively by hired writers). In March 2007, in concert with the introduction of social networking features such as messaging, friend lists and forums, weHow merged with eHow.

As of December 2007, eHow.com hosted more than 140,000 how-to articles and videos and has received more than 11 million unique visitors per month. By May 2008, the number of articles had increased to more than 337,000.

In April 2010, eHow closed its ability to accept newly generated user content. Professional writers and topic experts can submit an application via Demand Studios for the opportunity to write articles for eHow.

As of August 2010, eHow was hosting more than 2 million articles and videos and had received visits from nearly 46 million visitors each month.

References

External links

eHow website

Demand Media, Inc.

"For these sites their best asset is a good name", Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2006

"eHow to file for Bankruptcy?", Internet.com, February 8, 2001

"Is eHow a Scam?"

Category:How-to websites Category:Internet properties established in 1999