Kevin: When we went to do the IPO, it was very, very clear that the digital side was much more valuable than the magazine side. That was the beginning of the madness. Here is a magazine that generates a lot of income, respectability, great enthusiasm and support from readers. And here’s this really weird digital side that’s worth 10 times more than the magazine.
Jane: When Condé Nast bought WIRED and Lycos bought HotWired, the combined company was worth less than the separate company. To this day, we compare it to Nike’s decision to sell its shoes to Puma and its clothing to Adidas. Why would you do that? Why would you take the leading brand that had both the technical credibility and the lifestyle and cultural advantages and dismantle it?
Jeff: It was a very traditional and typical tech acquisition where the startup is acquired and enters the broader corporate culture. It just doesn’t work very well.
Jane: Louis and I were so despondent and heartbroken and devastated, and everyone was like, “Yeah, but everyone got rich.” That wasn’t the point. It was a very, very difficult time.
June: Almost all of us began to feel a fairly deep sense of loss and pain because the culture we knew, the values we believed in as innovators and creators, had been lost. That the industry was no longer about innovation, invention, creativity and certainly not about democratization. That it was all about money.
Well, maybe. There are 5.45 billion internet users on planet Earth and, of course, some of them are bad actors, no argument from WIRED. But most of us still rave on the Internet, go out with friends, look for jobs and partners, catch up on gossip and news, buy and sell things, and find travel companions who share our woes and our passions. And yes, a part of us is involved in fraud, abuse and bad ideology. Didn’t HotWired anticipate that humans would be humans?
Ian: In those days, we said: The good thing about the Internet is how secure it is. Everyone is there to help you and everyone just wants to do good things. People asked: Why require passwords for things, because who’s going to do something terrible on the Internet?
Kevin: Today something new comes out and people immediately say, “I don’t know what it is, but it’s going to hurt. “It’s going to bite me.” It’s definitely a change that wasn’t present when we started.
Jeff: But nostalgia can be dangerous. What we did was very difficult, and stressful, and we didn’t know what we were doing. When people say, “If we could go back then,” I say, no, we just had modems. It was terrible.
John P: As a business, HotWired failed. But all we were doing was scientific research.
Jonathan: We thought the Internet was going to be good for people. We were wrong.
Jeff: I still feel like literally anyone who has an idea can start hacking the web or creating apps or things like that. All that is still there. I think the core of what we started back then still exists on the web, and it still makes me very, very happy.
John: We were lucky with WIRED. With HotWired there was no other option and we couldn’t do it any other way if we went back and tried. But we were unlucky to come first.
Condé Nast also eventually purchased WIRED’s website in 2006.
Animation: James Marshall
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