History and Ownership
– Founded by Louis Rossetto, Jane Metcalfe, and Ian Charles Stewart in 1993
– Initial backing from software entrepreneur Charlie Jackson and Nicholas Negroponte
– Debut at the Macworld conference on January 2, 1993
– Won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence in its first four years
– Wired magazine and Wired News had separate owners from 1998 to 2006
– Condé Nast bought Wired News for $25 million in 2006, reuniting the magazine with its website
– Wired Ventures attempted to go public with an IPO in 1996, but the attempts were unsuccessful
– Wired Ventures was purchased by Advance Publications, which assigned it to Condé Nast Publications
Spin-offs and Expansion
– Launched Wired UK, Wired Italia, Wired Japan, and Wired Germany
– Wired UK was relaunched in April 2009
– HotWired spawned websites Webmonkey, HotBot, and Suck.com
– Wired launched the Italian edition in 2009
– The UK edition of Wired was relaunched in 2009
Influence and Recognition
– Founding editor and publisher Louis Rossetto had a strong influence on the magazine’s editorial outlook
– Recognized as the voice of the emerging digital culture
– Won several National Magazine Awards for both editorial and design
– Acknowledged as Adweek’s Magazine of the Decade in 2021
– Contributor Chris Anderson popularized the term ‘the long tail’
Notable Contributions
– Coined the term ‘crowdsourcing’
– Introduced the annual tradition of Vaporware Awards
– Published the story that became the movie Argo
– Known for deep investigative reporting, including a story on Facebook
– Published the iconic June 1997 cover featuring the Apple logo with a stylized crown of thorns
Leadership Changes and Website
– Scott Dadich was editor-in-chief from 2012-2014 and conducted an interview with Edward Snowden
– Nicholas Thompson, an editor at The New Yorker, became editor in 2017
– In 2021, Thompson left and was replaced by Gideon Lichfield
– In 2022, Conde Nast’s CEO stated that Wired does not operate in China due to news-related censorship
– In August 2023, Katie Drummond was announced as the new editor of Wired
– Wired.com, formerly known as Wired News and HotWired, launched in October 1994
– Wired.com and the magazine were split in the late 1990s but reunited when Condé Nast purchased Wired News in 2006
– Wired.com is currently paywalled as of August 2023
– Wired.com hosts several technology blogs on various topics
– Wired had a supplement called Geekipedia
Wired (stylized in all caps) is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, its editorial offices are in San Francisco, California, and its business office at Condé Nast headquarters in Liberty Tower in New York City. Wired has been in publication since its launch in January 1993. Several spin-offs have followed, including Wired UK, Wired Italia, Wired Japan, Wired Czech Republic and Slovakia and Wired Germany.
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Global Editorial Director | Katie Drummond |
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Former US editors-in-chief | Louis Rossetto, Katrina Heron, Chris Anderson, Nick Thompson, Gideon Lichfield |
Categories | Business, technology, lifestyle, thought leader |
Frequency | Monthly |
Total circulation (December 2023) | 541,614 |
Founder | Louis Rossetto, Jane Metcalfe |
Founded | February 1991 |
First issue | January 1993, as a quarterly |
Company | Condé Nast Publications |
Country | United States |
Based in | San Francisco, California |
Language | English |
Website | wired |
ISSN | 1059-1028 (print) 1078-3148 (web) |
OCLC | 24479723 |
From its beginning, the strongest influence on the magazine's editorial outlook came from founding editor and publisher Louis Rossetto. In 1991, Rossetto and founding creative director John Plunkett created a 12-page "Manifesto for a New Magazine," nearly all of whose ideas were realized in the magazine's first several issues. During the five years of Rossetto’s editorship, Wired's colophon credited Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan as its "patron saint." Wired went on to chronicle the evolution of digital technology and its impact on society.
Wired quickly became recognized as the voice of the emerging digital economy and culture and a pace setter in print design and web design. During its explosive growth in the mid-1990s, it articulated the values of a far-reaching "digital revolution" driven by the people creating and using digital technology and networks. It won the National Magazine Awards for General Excellence in its first year of publication, and others subsequently for both editorial and design. Adweek acknowledged Wired as its Magazine of the Decade in 2009. SF Gate called Wired “the magazine that led the digital revolution.”
From 1998 to 2006, Wired magazine and Wired News, which publishes at Wired.com, had separate owners. However, Wired News remained responsible for republishing Wired magazine's content online due to an agreement when Condé Nast purchased the magazine. In 2006, Condé Nast bought Wired News for $25 million, reuniting the magazine with its website.
Wired’s second editor Katrina Heron published Bill Joy’s “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” breaking with Wired’s optimism to present a dystopian view of the technological future.
Wired's third editor, Chris Anderson is known for popularizing the term "the long tail", as a phrase relating to a "power law"-type graph that helps to visualize the 2000s emergent new media business model. Anderson's article for Wired on this paradigm related to research on power law distribution models carried out by Clay Shirky, specifically in relation to bloggers. Anderson widened the definition of the term in capitals to describe a specific point of view relating to what he sees as an overlooked aspect of the traditional market space that has been opened up by new media.
The magazine coined the term crowdsourcing, as well as its annual tradition of handing out Vaporware Awards, which recognize "products, videogames, and other nerdy tidbits pitched, promised and hyped, but never delivered." In these same years, the magazine also published the story, written by Joshuah Bearman, that became the movie Argo. In more recent times, the publication became known for its deep investigative reporting, including a long story about Facebook—"Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook and the World"—that became the publication's most read article of the modern era. It was written by Fred Vogelstein and Nicholas Thompson, the latter of whom was the publication's editor-in-chief and had also been the editor on the piece that became Argo.