How-tos have a long history as a way of sharing knowledge on the internet, but are less successfull as FAQs, manuals, recipes and guides. How-tos are very successfull within Linux communities.
In the beginning, most how-to's on the internet were the result of a linear process in which an author wrote a how-to that readers would read. An example is eHow. This company raised $30 million from venture capitalists including Hummer Winblad, Media Technology Ventures, General Electric and Fingerhut which it used for hiring 200 professional writers [1].
After 2001, user added content played a more and more important role on the internet in a trend that is widely referred to as Web 2.0. This had a profound impact on the way in which how-tos are spread on the internet. A number of websites choose the wiki model as a way of sharing knowledge on how-tos. WikiHow was founded by the founders of eHow [2] and is currently the largest wiki on howto's. Howtopedia.org is a wiki with how-tos on appropriate technology [3]. Wikibooks contains a number of wikis on specific subjects. Howtodude.NET is a website where users can archive and share their own how-tos. It claims that wikis are no proper way for how-tos stating "howto's are fundamentally different from the information that is shared in wiki's" as "Wiki's require that contributors share a certain amount of norms and values" while "a howto is never neutral by definition" [4]. A blog style website that allows user to add how-tos on Linux is HowtoForge [5].