Yet obviously, anyone who wants to come through the top of the network, it's just miningco.com and you get in.

SCHINDLER: Talk a little about trust. Perhaps it will play out as a transfer of trusted brands from real space to cyberspace? You are creating trust from nothing.
KURNIT: There is no question trust is the next frontier on the Net. The trusted brands, whether it is a CMP property or CNN, makes a lot of sense as you come to the Net. Each of those companies is coming to the Net with the baggage of 30 or 50 years of old media history. The Net is a very, very different medium.

We built the company from scratch, on the Net, the way the Net is, which is entrepreneurs, individuals who have so much passion for their subject areas that they are working 30 to 50 hours a week on their sites for what is, for now, small money. These are folks who expect to make real money, but they are under very stringent guidelines from us.

To answer your question, yes, we do have to build this brand. It is starting to get recognition. ... Only in the last month or so can you see what happens when all 500 of the sites have really moved up to high quality. Now it is time to pour traffic into the network and get real brand recognition. C O N T I N U E D . . . 2 of 2
SCHINDLER: Are you engaged in legal action with Yahoo?
KURNIT: No legal action. Interestingly, Yahoo, which holds itself out as being the directory of the Internet, has stated that they think our sites are great. That's been stated in public, because the sites really are great. But they only point to the top of The Mining Company, rather than each of our domains. We find that to be reprehensible.

Their argument is, we're a network structure, the structure is very good, people can find what they need from the top of the network. My argument is that ZDNet is a network also, it just happens to have common ownership, and there are 1,600 links into ZDNet. I just think people ought to know that Yahoo, which stood for something that was quite pure and grew out of the dorm room of Jerry and David several years ago, isn't what it used to be. If it was, it would point to Mining Company sites which, in almost any niche, are among the top 10 sites.

SCHINDLER: Aren't you competing with Yahoo?
KURNIT: That's a funny business, where the whole infrastructure is a co-opetition. We link with each other, we compete with each other. We all want ad dollars and users to come to our sites. We are a network of destination sites. Yahoo is not that. Our destination sites happen to have great directories. Within most of our destinations, we actually do a better job than Yahoo does. But we also do original content, bulletin boards, and chat within those niches.

So, I would say, yeah, Yahoo probably views us as a competitor. But they would probably view SportsLine or SportsZone as a competitor. So, the problem for Yahoo over time is, does that mean they don't point to anything? So that the original directory structure of Yahoo evaporates, and all they are is content sites with no outlinks. I think not, but we are an interesting test case for them in this instance.

SCHINDLER: When are you going to be profitable?
KURNIT: Our model is a variable cost structure that grows with the Net. We actually have the largest content site on the Net at this point. It is a model that grows with the Net, so we don't have a huge expense too early.

SCHINDLER: You're not profitable today?
KURNIT: No, we're not.

SCHINDLER: What's your view on subscription vs. ad revenue?
KURNIT: It's going to be both. Clearly, short term it is going to be almost all advertising revenue. But my view is that the Net is an enormous transport mechanism, and to think that it is one thing or another doesn't make sense. There will be subscription products. We see them now in the sex area, we see them in certain information areas, like Individual or Inquisit, and I think we'll see more subscription.