In the late 1990s, Columbia University, led by executive vice provost Michael M. Crow, sought a way to use the emerging World Wide Web as a strategic tool for extending higher education's reach to the public.

Over a one-year period starting in January 1999, Crow and Kirschner quickly drew up the blueprint for Fathom, hoping to gain a first-mover advantage over potential competitors.

[5] Concerned by the initial success of Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia, they also saw Fathom as a proactive defense against losing valuable faculty members to other online education projects.

Their plan called for a) a broad range of multimedia educational content designed specifically for the website, not limited to course syllabi and resources (hence the partnership with archival institutions); and b) interactive features such as forums, collaborative learning tools and groups, and expert-led discussions.

[7] In these ways, Fathom's ambitions reached beyond the course-confined materials and limited interaction of more familiar online learning initiatives by universities, like MIT's OpenCourseWare.

"[7] As a for-profit consortium, Fathom could compete for highly skilled Web developers,[9] offer students a wide variety of courses, and allow Columbia to cooperate with participating institutions rather than work against them.

[17] Although Columbia invested $25 million in the venture, and 65,000 people created accounts, Fathom failed to turn a profit,[22] partly because few customers paid for any of the courses.