How Content Works

“HowStuffWorks is widely recognized as the leading source for clear, reliable explanations of how everything around us actually works. Through the flagship Web site HowStuffWorks.com, a popular series of books, an acclaimed kids’ magazine, as well as many other ventures, the award-winning company has helped explain the world for millions of curious people.”
 — This was the way HowStuffWorks described itself in 2005, two years before it was sold to Discovery for $250 million (apologies: this is how). Today, the site was sold to the same gray-web concern that operates Infospace for a fifth of that price, to be turned into glue or whatever really happens in those parts of the internet that you can feel but not see, that you can smell but not touch, that you can hear but not speak to, that can be clicked without clicking and read without reading.