About.com is betting its users are still interested in advice and articles from experts on more than 600 topics, but it knows it needs to evolve to stay relevant. So, that evolution has brought the site to this: About.com yesterday introduced a video library to its knowledge base.
The video library covers topics from maximizing your used car’s value to making road trips with children fun.
Scott Meyer, president-CEO of About.com in announcing the decision to go video said, “our traffic continues to grow.” He believes the video addition will allow About.com to continue to compete successfully against the likes of Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers. Interestingly enough, according to Meyer, Wikipedia helps About.com traffic by providing about 5,000 links to About.com.
An objective analysis of the world wide web would conclude that this is an excellent, if necessary move for About.com to make. Other observers agree. “Video’s becoming a baseline. … It’s absolutely necessary even just for retention of audience,” said eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman.
Every good website wants present valuable information and also wants to increase site surfer “stickiness”–the time one spends on a particular website.
While many websites have enlisted content producers to become video producers, “asking all the guides to make video wasn’t the right model,” Mr. Meyer said. Instead, About.com employs separate video experts who work under the direction of the vertical experts. For example, Kathy Moore stars in videos on how to childproof the home under the direction of Stephanie Brown, About.com’s parenting expert. About.com has about 500 videos so far.
