It's interesting how Wired has so frequently been obviously aware of the monumental shifts going on around them, but rarely able to effectively capitalize on them. Heck, they owned one of the better search engines at one time, and several of the best web development and technology destinations on the web...and yet, it feels kinda lost now. Smartest thing they've done in the past couple of years was buy reddit, but they need to be making a lot more acquisitions like that, or internalizing that adventurous spirit.
Kind of like most of the rest of us. I remember watching eBay's IPO and thinking I should get some of that - but not doing it. Then setting out on my own in late 1999 only to get crushed in the bubble. Seems like I've been following the internet for 15 years now, aware of what is going on, able to make a living, but always just a step behind.
Aint that the truth. I started a business in 1999, as well. I didn't really get crushed, but it wasn't particularly easy street either. I just always thought of the people behind Wired as being smarter than me since they've had so many early successes, but I can see how they fail pretty clearly, and it seems like an even harder fail because they moved with such assurance and competence in the beginning. I guess the really smart people left.
Frankly, I'm not sure Wired will make it to the end of the year.
The magazine has lost 50 percent of its ad pages so far this year, ranking among the worst off of the more than 150 monthly magazines measured by Media Industry Newsletter. Only Portfolio, which Condé Nast shut down last month, and Power and Motoryacht fared worse.
Because anybody can see what's happening now, but to make money you need to do the next thing -- and by definition, nobody is doing it yet. So you have to take the leap and decide, that of the hundreds of directions the web could go, it's going to go this way.
If it goes your way, then in retrospect, everyone will look at what you did and say "well, all the signs were there, it was obvious this was going to be big". But the 99 other guys who invested in, say, Coldfusion, or Shockwave, or Push screensavers, will be broke or stuck in permanent backwaters.
To be the Next Big Thing, you have to risk the 99% probability of being Yet Another Small Thing.
