Word Magazine was an online magazine active from 1995 to 2000.
Launched in 1995 by Carey Earle, Tom Livaccari and Dan Pelson, Word Magazine created original stories, interviews, games, applications, music, interactive objects and art, and community spaces. Word published new content daily, and each story was treated as a unique interface design experiment. Word was also a pioneer in the use of online advertising and was the first website to integrate microsites into brand advertising online. [1] It was also one of the first truly web oriented online magazines. [2]
Word's editorial team was originally led by Vibe magazine founding editor Jonathan Van Meter and creative director Jaime Levy. Marisa Bowe took over as editor-in-chief [3] prior to the site's June 1995 launch and Yoshi Sodeoka became Creative Director in early 1996. Daron Murphy was a founding senior editor. [4]
From 1998, Word featured a chatterbot named Fred the Webmate. [5]
In 2000, Streeter, Bowe, Murphy, Rose Kernochan, and John Bowe co-edited a book of interviews, "Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs," [6] inspired by Studs Terkel's Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. [1]
Also in 2000, Word staff developed the turn-based online strategy game Sissyfight 2000. [7]
Word won awards from I.D. Magazine and Print Magazine, among others and was placed in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of the Moving Image. [8]
Word was originally owned by Icon CMT until its sale in April 1998 to Zapata Corporation. [3] [9] Zapata closed Word.com in August, 2000. [10]
Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and is a subsidiary of Ybrant Digital.
Wired 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.
Salon is an American politically progressive and liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events.
Howard Rheingold is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities.
Omni was a science and science fiction magazine published for domestic American and UK markets. It contained articles on science, parapsychology, and short works of science fiction and fantasy. It was published as a print version between October 1978 and 1995. The first Omni e-magazine was published on CompuServe in 1986 and the magazine switched to a purely online presence in 1996. It ceased publication abruptly in late 1997, following the death of co-founder Kathy Keeton; activity on the magazine's website ended the following April.
Sissyfight 2000 is a turn-based strategy online game developed by the Word online magazine staff, including executive producer Marisa Bowe, producer Naomi Clark, lead programmer Ranjit Bhatnagar, and art director Yoshi Sodeoka, with game designer Eric Zimmerman. The original Shockwave version launched in 2000 but went offline in early 2009. A successful crowdfunding campaign was launched in early 2013 on Kickstarter by some members of the original development team, who announced the re-release of the game as open-source in HTML5. The original date for the game's relaunch was September 2013, but was delayed. An open beta test, started on 30 July 2014, is currently underway.
Suck.com was an online magazine, one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a great variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture. Launched in 1995 and geared towards a Generation X audience, the website's motto was "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun". Despite not publishing new content since 2001, the site remained online until December 2018.
Feed or feedmag.com (1995–2001) was one of the earliest online magazines that relied entirely on its original content.
R. U. Sirius is an American writer, editor, talk show host, musician and cyberculture celebrity. He is best known as co-founder of Mondo 2000 magazine and its original editor-in-chief from 1989 to 1993.
The Chicago Reader, or Reader, is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The Reader has been recognized as a pioneer among alternative weeklies for both its creative nonfiction and its commercial scheme. Richard Karpel, then-executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, wrote:
[T]he most significant historical event in the creation of the modern alt-weekly occurred in Chicago in 1971, when the Chicago Reader pioneered the practice of free circulation, a cornerstone of today's alternative papers. The Reader also developed a new kind of journalism, ignoring the news and focusing on everyday life and ordinary people.
Hotwired (1994–1999) was the first commercial online magazine, launched on October 27, 1994. Although it was part of the print magazine Wired, Hotwired carried original content.
Ars Technica is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games.
FringeWare Review was a magazine about subculture published in Austin, Texas. Many of the publication's writers and editors were associated with other publications such as Boing Boing, Mondo 2000, Whole Earth Review, and Wired. The last issue of the magazine was #14, published in 1998. The magazine had an international circulation, distributed primarily by Fine Print, an Austin-based company that focused on 'zine distribution.
Fast Company is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year.
Daron Murphy is co-founder of the social justice creative agency Art Not War. Since the agency was founded in 2011, Murphy has written, directed and produced hundreds of short films and online videos that have earned billions of views worldwide.
Creative Review is a bimonthly print magazine and website. The magazine focuses on commercial creativity, covering design, advertising, photography, branding, digital products, film, and gaming. The magazine is published bimonthly in print and also has an online magazine and a podcast.
John Bowe, is an American author and speech expert. He has written for The New York Times Magazine,The New Yorker, GQ, The Nation, McSweeney's, and This American Life. His work has been featured and reviewed in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and he has appeared on CNN, The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart, the BBC, and many others. He is the co-editor of GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs ; author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, editor of US: Americans Talk About Love, and author of I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film Basquiat with Julian Schnabel.
Jaime Levy is an American author, lecturer, interface designer, and user experience strategist. She first became known for her new media projects in the 1990s. Her best-known projects include the floppy disk distributed with Billy Idol’s album Cyberpunk, WORD, an online magazine, and an online cartoon series, CyberSlacker. She is the author of the business book UX Strategy, which was first published by O’Reilly Media in 2015. It is widely regarded as the definitive work on the practice of user experience strategy and has been translated into nine languages.
Fred The Webmate was a chatterbot created in 1998 for the defunct e-zine Word Magazine. It was inspired by an early computer program ELIZA, which attempted to mimic human conversation by use of a script.
Gurl.com was an American website for teenage girls that was online from 1996 to 2018. It was created by Rebecca Odes, Esther Drill, and Heather McDonald as a resource centered on teen advice, body image, female sexuality, and other teen-related concerns. First published as an online zine, it later expanded into an online community. At one point, it provided a free e-mail and web hosting service, known as Gurlmail and Gurlpages respectively.