New Forum, Old Faces

I was a little puzzled about the new forum with the old faces. One of the old faces was Philip ~ the same Philip who had sent me off on my early quest for scanned images of my art. The first time we crossed paths in a discussion, I asked him about the resemblance of the two forums, and he told me about MiningCo's new name, About.com. Like MiningCo, About.com had "guides," and Philip was the guide of the art forum. Most customer support on the Web is a frustrating, robotic interchange of impersonal forms. About.com guides were different. Part of their task was to keep the threads of discussion open, while keeping the forum running smoothly. In other words, they were "customer support," without seeming to be support. When you think about it, it was pure genius, and MiningCo ~ now doing business as About.com ~ had been the first to think of it. Guides put a human face on the cold, impersonal technology of the Internet. Later I would run across articles on About's "guide" program, and found that it was considered an edgy and creative concept among tech gurus; or at least, it was About.com's claim to fame where brand marketing was concerned.

MiningCo, About.com, Philip, and The Artist's Exchange Art Forum.