Comments for Wired vs Wired: Evolution of a Technology Magazine

Wired vs Wired: Evolution of a Technology Magazine

2007-10-03T00:03:58Z

Wired magazine has been telling us what's hip and cool in technology since the birth of the Web. In this post, we look at the elements that make up Wired - and how it continues to evolve as both a print and online publication.

Led by its current editor in chief, Chris Anderson (since 2001), Wired has always stayed true to its original style and format. From jargon, to gadgets, to tech breakthroughs and the people behind the technology, Wired has remained on cutting edge and, at times, defined it. Also over the past decade and more, Wired and other Conde Nast publications have adapted well to the print-online duality. Today the company maintains a print edition, an online edition, a rich set of logs and, recently launched, Geekipedia. The print edition brings subscription revenue as well as advertising dollars. The online edition is free, supported only by advertising.

Wired, The Print Edition

The print edition of Wired costs $10 a year. Considering that a pack of cigarettes in New York costs $9, it seems ridiculously low (and much healthier than smoking!). But actually, in our day and age people do not want to pay for information. Magazines and traditional media are rapidly giving way to free online content. Yet, Wired is worth paying for - because in print, its design and other attributes are are gorgeous.

]]> A few years ago, the editor of MIT Technology Review wrote that the format of 'the magazine' is changing. To address the increasing shift into online information consumption, MIT Technology Review announced it would become thinner, have shorter stories and will feature more photo essays. The simple insight here is that to keep its subscribers, the MIT magazine needed to do something in print that wouldn't be easy to replicate online. But Wired has had this formula all along.

Made from the thick paper, with bright, loud colors, generous pictures and elegant sidebars, Wired is a pleasure to hold and to flip through. Most of the stories are bite sized, designed to accommodate increasingly ADD readers. The middle of the magazine features gadget and game reviews, aiming to please different kinds of geek. And the features are always thoroughly researched, informative, and focused on the latest technology and people.

How Does the Print Edition Make Money?

In 2005 Wired won an excellence award and increased its subscription base to 1 million. At a rate of $10 per subscription, that is $10M right there. In addition, Wired undoubtedly makes good money from advertising. And like the rest of the magazine, the ads are gorgeous. Just flipping through the last edition, I saw Infinity, Sprint, Epson, Dillards, TurboChef, Rolex, Pioneer, BlackBerry, Claiborne, Sharp and, my personal favorite, the Patron Tequila - all within the first few pages. These kinds of advertisers are indicative of the success of the magazine and the kind of audience it is reaching.

To give you an idea of the current rates, a full page ad in PC Magazine goes for $65K. Taking a ballpark of $50K and assuming that only 20% of the 200 pages of Wired are ads, it comes to $2M per issue - or $24M annually. But this number is likely to be much bigger for Wired.

Wired.com - Wired Reloaded

The online edition has a different feel. It does not have the 'loud' look of the print version. The website is clean and informative. After staring at it for 10 seconds, you realize that the print and online do not compete - but rather they complement each other. The online version gives you the dry story, without fun and playfulness of the print version.

The website offers much more than just the magazine content re-purposed. It features a mix of blogs, magazine features and sections focused on a topic. The sections actually recycle content from the magazine and their blogs, creating another way to get to the same information.

The site has also embraced and integrated the latest social software features. On the bottom of an article, readers can add to del.icio.us or digg - but most notably to reddit, which is owned by Conde Nast. In addition, there is a sort of 'digg clone' built in, which lets readers vote on each others comments. This particular feature does not seem very engaging, as the users must be logged in to be able to vote.

Wired Blogs and Geekipedia

The 12 blogs offered by Wired online are on a range of topics; from Compiler, which focuses on software, technology and tech news, to Listening Post, which covers digital music, to Wired Science, which blogs about science news. These blogs are of the highest quality, update frequently and push out a wealth of information. Subscribing to just these blogs could easily fill one's daily reading appetite.

Geekipedia is the latest spin on pop culture launched by Wired. With the aim to build a web destination, Wired shrewdly gave away a print edition of Geekipedia for free. The 149 entries so far focus on people, places, ideas and trends that Wired editors think everyone ought to know. Each entry is a bite size paragraph, designed to inform - but mostly to spark interest and prompt further exploration.

In this format, it is difficult to see this as a competitor to Wikipedia - and it is not. But Wired is making some interesting moves with this publication. The Geekipedia web pages invite users to suggest new entries, as well as vote on the current ones. We will have to see how this experiment goes - so far, the site does not have the level of participation that we find on active social sites.

How Does the Online Edition Make Money?

Among the banner advertisers on Wired.com, we spotted Intel, Adobe, Sony, Yamaha and BASF. The ads seem to be targeted at a much more technical crowd than in the paper magazine. It is also interesting that most of the banner ads are not contextual and there isn't a great variety. In addition to the banner ads, on the very bottom of the pages there are Google ads - which seem quite out of place there.

Another interesting thing is that Conde Nast heavily cross-promotes its other properties on Wired.com. Instead of ads, there are promos for their other publications - e.g. enticing readers to subscribe to the print version of Wired. This suggests that the ad space online, at least for now, is worth less than subscriptions and ads in the magazine.

Conclusion

Wired is still cool, alive and very much kicking. Its print edition appears to be doing very well. Its online presence is complementary and cross-promotes other Conde Nast publications. It also features 12 great blogs. With the recent launch of Geekipedia, Wired made an interesting move - possibly an attempt to grow a niche community site. It seems like a great idea; because the mix between the Wikipedia style, a more narrow focus, Digg-like voting and bite size content, might be just want people are looking for.

Are you a fan of Wired? Why or why not? Do you enjoy the print magazine or online edition more? Please share your thoughts with us.

Note: Images in this post are from Wired Magazine.

Comment from Cam on 2007-10-02

2007-10-03T01:34:17Z

I'm a huge Wired fan and have been since I was at uni back in the mid-90s. I prefer the print version, but also subscribe to a few of their blogs (Danger Room, Compiler, Threat Level).

About the only criticism I have is that there can be a bit too much techno-hyperbole at times, but in general, I find it a very entertaining read.

Comment from Scrivs on 2007-10-02

2007-10-03T03:52:24Z

The online edition has a different feel

By this you must mean that it is almost impossible to read with it 8px font across many sections of the site. Almost zero use of line-height for easy scanning. Although I think it is great their online version complements the offline so well content wise, the design needs major work for me to appreciate it or even go there to read on a consistent basis.

Comment from Alex Iskold on 2007-10-02

2007-10-03T03:57:29Z

@Scrivs there are size controls built into each page.

Comment from Frank Bruno on 2007-10-02

2007-10-03T04:14:06Z

As a 10-year subscriber, I agree with #1 that the hyperbole can be annoying, but I think they've toned it down a lot, which I welcome. They've stopped having, say, nuclear industry PR flaks write cover stories on how awesome nukes are.

Also, Alex, did you think about how to calculate newsstand purchases? I see Wired everywhere these days, right up there with all the major mags.

Comment from Javaun on 2007-10-02

2007-10-03T04:20:18Z

I've also been a subscriber for the last decade and can't do without the magazine, even when I didn't need to read it offline (i.e. while commuting on a train). It's ironic that I prefer to read about technology and digital trends in an analog format. I've occasionally added a few other magazines to get another perspective on tech or business trends, including MIT TR, Business 2.0, FastCompany, Red Herring, and the now defunct Industry Standary (RIP). But none have ever challenged Wired for spotting the high level trends.

Comment from Marc Fiszman on 2007-10-02

2007-10-03T06:53:16Z

Appreciate you like the magazine (friends with the editor?), but how about a little objectivity? Last time I checked, the print magazine was overflowing with ads. I mean, an unacceptably large number. Perhaps I'm thinking of a different publication, but isn't Wired the one where you need to flick through about 20 pages of ads before you even hit the contents? For you that's okay I guess, because the ads are "gorgeous"? Jeez...

Actually, your comment about the ads pretty much sums up Wired's decline. Still some great stuff in there, but wow, if you read that thing when it first came out, it's gone seriously trashville..

Comment from gmlk on 2007-10-03

2007-10-03T07:31:55Z

Here in Europe a subscription to the print version is about $70. Transportation (it's printed in the USA) it the main cause.

WIred is also not really a global magazine: The ads are very USA oriented, as are the articles. Wired had a very strong "US" and "The rest of the world" view which makes it a little bit less appealing to readers in this so called "the rest of the world".

Comment from sanfrandan on 2007-10-03

2007-10-03T08:11:19Z

Just to add some perspective to the ad numbers - the Publishers Information Bureau, which tallies ad pages (but has no way of knowing how many are discounted, which is a fairly routine practice), estimates that for the April-June quarter of 2007, Wired brought in $20 million, up 13.6 percent over the prior year. At that rate, that's more than $80 million per year. So revenue is much higher than you estimated, fwiw.

The link is here:
http://www.magazine.org/content/Files/MagTotal2QTR2007.xls

Comment from Neil on 2007-10-03

2007-10-03T08:55:36Z

I bought the Halo 3 issue a couple of weeks ago, and as a first time Wired reader (from the UK), I wasn't impressed with the content-to-ad ratio. I won't be buying it again.

"the ads are gorgeous. Just flipping through the last edition, I saw Infinity, Sprint, Epson, Dillards, TurboChef, Rolex, Pioneer, BlackBerry, Claiborne, Sharp and, my personal favorite, the Patron Tequila - all within the first few pages"

Alex - you're the first person that I've ever heard of with an appreciation for full page ads.

If we're going on looks, Edge magazine really has to be the one to beat. Does anyone buy Edge magazine outside the UK?

Comment from Don Jones on 2007-10-03

2007-10-03T23:00:08Z

Alex,

The Internet may be training people not to pay for low quality or unstructured information that they have to either work hard to find or wonder about its accuracy.

But for high quality, structured, well-presented information, people are paying for it.

Comment from Frederick on 2007-10-09

2007-10-09T07:18:39Z

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