How do you make money?

ITtoolbox generates most of its revenue from online advertising for hundreds of clients. Advertisers in our network include Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Dell, and many more IT vendors. We also generate revenue from staffing tools including job postings and a resume database, and IT surveys conducted using the ITtoolbox audience. ITtoolbox first became profitable in late 1999 and has been profitable 16 of the last 17 quarters, and has 40 employees. ITtoolbox is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and has offices in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Which sites or companies do you think represent the best example of the value online communities can provide?

By far, my top choices would be eBay and Amazon. Both companies are changing the way millions of people earn their living and shop by using online communities. Many people think of eBay as just an auction site, however, their true asset is a successful community. By linking together millions of people and providing an infrastructure with a purpose, in this case buying and selling items, they have been able to establish a highly scalable business whose asset continues to be built by the members of the community. eBay provides the infrastructure and marketing to ensure the community has a healthy environment in which to prosper.

Over time, Amazon has quietly added community as a core offering, changing the way many of us shop in the process. The Amazon user review feature provides us with a first of its kind, powerful way to evaluate products before we buy them. I now go to Amazon before I buy just about anything to see what other buyers thought. I skip right over the professionally written reviews and go straight to the user comments. This again is an example of community at its finest.

I believe blogs offer the same type of potential-to offer content that comes from the most trustworthy source, the front line. It used to be that in order for information to become widely available, it had to jump over extraordinary cost hurdles (editorial, printing, distribution, and marketing costs just to name a few). That meant three things, 1) the information was scarce-not much information could make it over the cost and distribution hurdles, 2) in order to produce content in a predictable fashion, editors had to be kept on staff in publishing offices-no longer on the front lines where information is most accurate, and 3) the money to pay for the distribution of that content came from companies whose products were often the subject of the content-creating an inherent conflict.

Blogs are not restricted by these traditional shortcomings. Like Amazon's reviews, blogs offer a true view from the front line. The information contained in them can be distributed globally at very little cost, providing a new source of highly valuable content to the masses.

You recently launched a new blog product -- can you tell me about that?

Sure. ITtoolbox Blogs is a Web site that makes unique use of blogs for a professional purpose. We have created what we believe is the first of its kind, controlled publishing venue offering first hand information from the front line of the IT market. Readers of the ITtoolbox Blogs site get a front row view into real world IT decisions, projects, and career challenges as they are being faced by blog authors. This provides readers with the ultimate tool for staying current in their field and learning from a highly trustworthy source-the aggregate voice of their peers.

To provide the front line perspective, we recruit authors from the ITtoolbox community of more than one million professionals and selectively choose who will be published based on what type of information we know our audience responds to. We then provide a series of publishing guidelines and a framework to ensure that authors create blog entries of a fairly consistent quality. Once published, authors are heavily promoted to our large global audience, giving them instant notoriety and fame in their field of expertise. They can choose to publish for one month, one year, or whatever time frame makes sense for them.

By providing this structure and opportunity, the ITtoolbox Blogs site generates high quality content with a very professional focus. For the first time ever, IT and business professionals are able to get a consistent and accurate view of the latest trends from the people using technology and making decisions on-the-job, similar to the way Amazon reviews provide a first ever front line review from buyers and users of various products.

What is your view of wikis?

Wikis are an interesting concept. The jury is still out on whether or not they will be embraced by the masses the way blogs and discussion communities have been. Unlike those community formats, wikis are much less structured, making it difficult to establish any sort of common use and wide scale movement around them. That may yet happen as wikis become more sophisticated and incorporate change control and other structural features. In their present form, it is easy to imagine the successful use of wikis on a smaller but valuable scale. However, it seems unlikely to me that they will have the same level of acceptance as blogs or groups in the near future.