Word Magazine was an

online magazine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer mag ...

active from 1995 to 2000.

History

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

microsite A microsite is an individual web page or a small cluster of pages which are meant to function as a discrete entity (such as an iFrame) within an existing website or to complement an offline activity. The microsite's main landing page can have its ...

s into brand advertising online. It was also one of the first truly web oriented online magazines. Word's editorial team was originally led by ''

Vibe ''Vibe'' is an American music and entertainment magazine founded by producers David Salzman and Quincy Jones. The publication predominantly features R&B and hip hop music artists, actors and other entertainers. After shutting down producti ...

'' magazine founding editor Jonathan Van Meter and creative director Jaime Levy. Marisa Bowe took over as editor-in-chief prior to the site's June 1995 launch and

Yoshi Sodeoka Yoshi Sodeoka is a Japanese-born artist and musician who has been producing art projects since the early 1990s. In 1989 he moved to New York City to study art and design at the Pratt Institute.Daron Murphy Daron Murphy is co-founder of the creative agency and Art Not War. As a writer, producer, director, and creative director, Murphy has produced videos for social justice organizations. He has written and directed dozens of pieces. Murphy is also ...

was a founding senior editor. On launch in 1995 Word Magazine was the first to use music/effects soundtracks to their articles using

Real Audio RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fid ...

with Kit Krash’s soundtrack for John Bowe’s “Big Wheel” to be the first ever use of music audio streaming on that platform (previously only a baseball game was broadcast). The composer Karthik Swaminathan aka Kit Krash from the

Illbient Illbient is a genre of electronic music and an art movement that originated among hip hop-influenced artists from Williamsburg, New York City around 1994. DJ Olive, and DJ Spooky, pioneers of the genre, have both claimed to have coined the ter ...

band

Byzar Byzar is an American experimental electronic music ensemble, considered one of the founders of the Illbient genre, along with DJ Spooky, Sub Dub, We, and the Soundlab collective, active in the New York experimental dance/electronic music scene du ...

continued as Word's in house sound designer and main audio producer to the end of the publication where he provided soundtracks for many of the articles and projects as well as having several online radio stations under the Junk Radio section of the magazine. From 1998, Word featured a

chatterbot A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behav ...

named

Fred the Webmate 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. Visitors to the chatterbot encountered a s ...

. In 2000, Streeter, Bowe, Murphy, Rose Kernochan, and John Bowe co-edited a book of interviews, "Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs," inspired by Studs Terkel's Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Also in 2000, Word staff developed the turn-based online strategy game Sissyfight 2000. Word won awards from I.D. Magazine and

Print Magazine ''Print'' is an American design and culture website that began as ''Print, A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts'', in 1940, and continued publishing a physical edition through the end of 2017 as ''Print''. As a printed publication, ''Print'' ...

, among others and was placed in the permanent collection of the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

, the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

and the

Museum of the Moving Image The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens, New York City. The museum originally opened in 1988 as the Amer ...

. Word was originally owned by Icon CMT until its sale in April 1998 to

Zapata Corporation HRG Group, Inc., formerly Harbinger Group Inc. and Zapata Corporation, is a holding company based in Rochester, New York, having originated from an oil company started by a group including future U.S. president George H. W. Bush. In 2009, it w ...

. Zapata closed Word.com in August, 2000.

References

{{reflist , 2

External links

The 10 websites that changed the world
* Video
Marisa Bowe, Editor of Word.com discusses the website

Sissyfight
Defunct websites Online magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1995 Magazines disestablished in 2000 Defunct magazines published in the United States