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The Verge
Screenshot of The Verge homepage showing an Apple Macbook Pro M4 as major story surrounded by five additional news stories on the right side, the background is black
Screenshot of the website in December 2024
Type of site
Technology News Science, Entertainment
Headquarters85 Broad Street
New York City, NY 10004
U.S.
OwnerVox Media[1]
Created by
EditorNilay Patel[3]
URLtheverge.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedNovember 1, 2011; 13 years ago (2011-11-01)[4]
Current statusOnline
OCLC number867048487

The Verge is an American technology news website headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City and operated by Vox Media. The website publishes news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts.[3][5]

The website was launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media's proprietary multimedia publishing platform Chorus.[6][7] In 2014, Nilay Patel was named editor-in-chief and Dieter Bohn executive editor; Helen Havlak was named editorial director in 2017.[8][9] The Verge won five Webby Awards for the year 2012 including awards for Best Writing (Editorial), Best Podcast for The Vergecast, Best Visual Design, Best Consumer Electronics Site, and Best Mobile News App.[10][11]

History

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Original wordmark (2011–2016)
Second wordmark (2016–2022)

Origins

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Between March and April 2011, up to nine of Engadget's writers, editors, and product developers, including editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, left AOL, the company behind that website, to start a new gadget site.[12][13][14] The other departing editors included managing editor Nilay Patel and staffers Paul Miller, Ross Miller, Joanna Stern, Chris Ziegler, as well as product developers Justin Glow and Dan Chilton.[12][15][16] In early April 2011, Topolsky announced that their unnamed new site would be produced in partnership with sports news website SB Nation, debuting some time in the fall.[15][17] Topolsky lauded SB Nation's similar interest in the future of publishing, including what he described as their beliefs in independent journalism and in-house development of their own content delivery tools.[15][16] SB Nation's Jim Bankoff saw an overlap in the demographics of the two sites and an opportunity to expand SB Nation's model.[15] Bankoff previously worked at AOL in 2005, where he led their Engadget acquisition.[18] Other news outlets viewed the partnership as positive for both SB Nation and Topolsky's staff, and negative for AOL's outlook.[19][20][21][22]

Bankoff, chairman and CEO of Vox Media (owner of SB Nation), said in a 2011 interview that though the company had started out with a focus on sports, other categories including consumer technology had growth potential for the company.[23] Development of Vox Media's content management system (CMS), Chorus, was led by Trei Brundrett, who later became the chief operating officer for the company.[24]

This Is My Next

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Following news of his untitled partnership with SB Nation in April 2011, Topolsky announced that the Engadget podcast hosted by Patel, Paul Miller, and himself would continue at an interim site called This Is My Next.[15][25] By August 2011, the site had reached 1 million unique visitors and 3.4 million page views.[25] By October 2011, the site had 3 million unique views per month and 10 million total page views.[2] Time listed the site in its Best Blogs of 2011,[25] calling the prototype site "exemplary".[26] The site closed upon The Verge's launch on November 1, 2011.[citation needed]

On June 11, 2014, The Verge launched a new section called "This Is My Next", edited by former editor David Pierce, as a buyer's guide for consumer electronics.[27] By 2022, this section had been retitled simply "Buying Guide".[28]

Launch

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The Verge launched November 1, 2011,[4] along with an announcement of a new parent company: Vox Media.[2] According to the company, the site launched with 4 million unique visitors and 20 million pageviews.[29] At the time of Topolsky's departure, Engadget had 14 million unique visitors.[12][21] Vox Media overall doubled its unique visitors to about 15 million during the last half of 2012.[29] The Verge had 12 former Engadget staffers working with Topolsky at the time of launch.[2] It hired Tom Warren, former Neowin editor-in-chief and WinRumors blogger, as their new United Kingdom based senior editor.[30] In 2013, The Verge launched a new science section, Verge Science, with former Wired editor Katie Drummond leading the effort.[31] Patel replaced Topolsky as editor-in-chief in mid-2014.[32] Journalist Walt Mossberg joined The Verge's editing team after Vox Media acquired Recode in 2015.[3] By 2016, the website's advertising had shifted from display advertisements, matched with articles' contents, to partnerships and advertisements adjusted to the user.[33]

2016–present

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2016–2022 logo

Vox Media revamped The Verge's visual design for its fifth anniversary in November 2016.[34] Its logo featured a modified Penrose triangle, an impossible object.[35] On November 1, The Verge launched version 3.0 of its news platform, offering a redesigned website along with the new logo.[36]

In September 2016, The Verge fired deputy editor Chris Ziegler after it learned that he had been working for Apple since July.[37] Helen Havlak was promoted to editorial director in mid-2017.[38] In 2017, The Verge launched "Guidebook" to host technology product reviews.[39] In May 2018, Verge Science launched a YouTube channel, which had more than 638,000 subscribers and 30 million views by January 2019. The channel received more than 5.3 million views in November 2018 alone.[40] As of August 2023, the channel has over 100 million views and 1.15 million subscribers.

In March 2022, Dieter Bohn announced his resignation from The Verge in his position of Executive Editor, and that he would be moving to a new position at Google.[41]

The Verge rebranded and redesigned its website in September 2022 with a sharper, more simplistic logo, more colorful visual design, and new typefaces. Its new home page format resembled a news feed, incorporating external conversations from social media and reporting from other publications. The new format will, in part, reduce aggregation reporting.[42]

In December 2024, The Verge began to paywall some content behind a subscription service; this offering covers "premium" reports, newsletters, and reviews, as well as fewer advertisements and other features.[43][44]

Content

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Podcasts

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The Verge broadcasts a live weekly podcast, The Vergecast. The inaugural episode was November 4, 2011. It included a video stream of the hosts.[45] A second weekly podcast was introduced on November 8, 2011. Unlike The Vergecast, The Verge Mobile Show was primarily focused on mobile phones.[46][47] The Verge also launched the weekly podcast Ctrl-Walt-Delete, hosted by Walt Mossberg, in September 2015.[48] The Verge's What's Tech podcast was named among iTunes's best of 2015.[49] The podcast Why'd You Push That Button?, launched in 2017 and co-hosted by Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany,[50] received a Podcast Award in the "This Week in Tech Technology Category" in 2018.[51][52]

Editor-in-chief Nilay Patel hosts a weekly interview podcast called Decoder.[53] On February 8th, 2024, Patel announced Decoder would now do two episodes per week.[54]

Video content

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On The Verge

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On August 6, 2011, in an interview with the firm Edelman, The Verge co-founder Marty Moe announced it was launching The Verge Show, a web television series. After its launch, the show was named On The Verge. The first episode was recorded on Monday, November 14, 2011, with guest Matias Duarte.[55] The show is a technology news entertainment show, and its format is similar to that of a late-night talk show, but it is broadcast over the Internet, not on television. The show's first episode was released on November 15, 2011.

Ten episodes of On The Verge were broadcast, with the most recent episode going out on November 10, 2012.[56] On May 24, 2013, it was announced that the show would return under a new weekly format, alongside a new logo and theme tune.[57]

Other video content

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On May 8, 2013, editor-in-chief Topolsky announced Verge Video, a website that contains the video backlog from The Verge.[58]

Circuit Breaker, a gadget blog, launched in 2016,[59] has amassed nearly one million Facebook followers and debuted a live show on Twitter in October 2017. The blog's videos average more than 465,000 views, and Jake Kastrenakes serves as editor-in-chief, as of 2017.[60] Also in 2016, USA Network and The Verge partnered on Mr. Robot Digital After Show, a digital aftershow for the television series Mr. Robot.[61] In December, Twitter and Vox Media announced a live streaming partnership for The Verge's programs covering the Consumer Electronics Show.[62]

The series Next Level, hosted and produced by Lauren Goode, debuted in 2017 and was recognized in the "Technology" category at the 47th annual San Francisco / Northern California Emmy Awards (2018).[63][64] In August 2017, The Verge launched the web series Space Craft, hosted by science reporter Loren Grush.[65]

In 2022, The Verge produced the show The Future Of for Netflix.[66]

PC Build guide controversy

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In September 2018, The Verge published the article "How to Build a Custom PC for Editing, Gaming or Coding" with a companion YouTube video entitled "How we Built a $2000 Custom Gaming PC". The video was criticized for containing errors on almost every step presented by its host, Stefan Etienne,[67] such as applying a liberal amount of thermal paste onto the processor as opposed to a small amount.[68] An online harassment campaign against Etienne ensued.[68]

In February 2019, lawyers from The Verge's parent company Vox Media filed a DMCA takedown notice, requesting that YouTube remove videos critical of The Verge's video, alleging copyright infringement. YouTube took down two of the videos, uploaded by YouTube channels BitWit and ReviewTechUSA, while applying a copyright "strike" to these two channels.[67][69] YouTube later reinstated the two videos and retracted the copyright "strikes" after a request from Verge editor Nilay Patel, although Patel acknowledged that he agreed with the legal argument that led to their removal.[70][71] Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica described this controversy as an example of the Streisand effect, saying that while law regarding fair use is unclear regarding this type of situation, "the one legal precedent ... suggests ... that this kind of video is solidly within the bounds of copyright's fair use doctrine."[67]

Nearly three years after the erroneous build, PC builder and YouTuber Linus Sebastian collaborated with Etienne in a video entitled "Fixing the Verge PC build", to rectify the mistakes thereof. In it, Etienne admitted not being an experienced builder at the time (having built only four computers at that point, with The Verge build being his first on camera), and revealed that before the video went live, The Verge was unwilling to hear from him to address what he saw were editing issues, insisting that the video be uploaded regardless.[68]

See also

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References

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  3. ^ a b c Greenberg, Julia (May 26, 2015). "Vox Media Acquires Tech News Site Re/code". Wired. Retrieved January 11, 2019.
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  5. ^ Ingram, Mathew (September 13, 2018). "The Outline and the curse of media venture capital". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on August 29, 2023. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
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  53. ^ "Decoder". www.theverge.com. Archived from the original on December 1, 2021. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
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