History
Boing Boing started as a zine in 1988 by Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair, his wife. Issues were subtitled "The World's Greatest Neurozine". Associate editors included Gareth Branwyn, Jon Lebkowsky, and Paco Nathan. Along with Mondo 2000, Boing Boing was an influence in the development of the cyberpunk subculture. It reached a maximum circulation of 17,500 copies. Common themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney and left-wing politics. The last issue of the zine was #15.
Boing Boing became a Web site in 1995 and one year later was a web-only publication. While researching for an article about blogs in 1999, Frauenfelder became acquainted with the Blogger software, which led to the relaunch of Boing Boing as a weblog on January 21, 2000, described as a "directory of wonderful things." Over time, Frauenfelder was joined by three co-editors: Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin. All four Boing Boing contributors are, or have been, contributing writers for Wired magazine.
In September 2003, Boing Boing removed their Quicktopics user-comment feature without warning or explanation. Bloggers commenting on the change at the time speculated that it stemmed from "identity impersonators and idiot flamers" pretending to be co-editors. Xeni Jardin was also a guest on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the Washington Post's decision to remove their comments section, and spoke from her experience at Boing Boing. In August 2007, a redesigned site was launched, which included a restored comment facility, moderated by Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
In 2004, the project incorporated as Happy Mutants LLC, and John Battelle became the blog's business manager. Boing Boing has twice won the Bloggies for 'Weblog of the Year', in 2004 and 2005, at a time where it "had become one of the most-read and linked-to blogs in the world" according to Fast Company.
The site added advertising over the course of late 2004, placed above and to the left and right of material, and, in 2005, in the site's RSS feed as well. Editor Cory Doctorow noted that "John said it's going to be harder to make a little money to pay your bandwidth bills than it will be to make a lot of money and have a real source of income from this." The advertising income during the first quarter was already $27,000, and as of 2010, Boing Boing still "makes a nice living for its founders and a handful of contract employees" and remains a prominent member of Battelle's blog network Federated Media Publishing Inc.
Boing Boing featured a "guest blogger" sidebar, then stopped the series in summer of 2004. In 2008, the "guest blogger" series resumed, with guests posting in the main blog for two-week periods. Guests have included Charles Platt, John Shirley, Tiffany Lee Brown, Karen Marcelo of Survival Research Laboratories, Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom, Rudy Rucker, Gareth Branwyn, Wiley Wiggins, Jason Scott of textfiles.com, Jessamyn West of librarian.net, journalists Danny O'Brien and Quinn Norton and comedian John Hodgman.
In September 2006, Boing Boing introduced a weekly podcast, "Boing Boing Boing", intended to cover the week's posts and upcoming projects. The show's cast consists of the Boing Boing editors accompanied by a weekly guest. In the same month, Boing Boing introduced a second podcast called "Get Illuminated", which features interviews with writers, artists, and other creatives.
The site's own original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license, as of August 2008.
In September 2009, Boing Boing refused to comply with a demand from Polo Ralph Lauren's lawyers to remove a post concerning a heavily manipulated image of model Filippa Hamilton, originally published by the Photoshop Disasters blog, which was itself forced to comply by its hosting provider. Ralph Lauren issued DMCA takedown notices to BoingBoing's ISP and Blogspot, which hosts Photoshop Disasters, claiming their use of the image infringed copyright. Blogspot complied, but Boing Boing's ISP consulted with Boing Boing and agreed that the image was fair use. As a result, Boing Boing issued a mocking rebuttal, using the same image again and posting the takedown notice. The rebuttal was widely reported, including on frequently viewed websites such as The Huffington Post and ABC News.
On the evening of 27 October 2010, somebody hacked the Boing Boing website. About one hour later, it was down, but then returned.
On May 3, 2011, the 1st podcast of "Gweek" was released. Gweek is a podcast where the editors and friends of Boing Boing talk about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, TV shows, music, movies, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff. In the first episode of Boing Boing's Gweek, Rob Beschizza and Mark Frauenfelder discussed subjects such as the video game "Portal 2", graphic novels, upcoming science fiction books, and recommendations of some of their favorite adventure games for mobile platforms.
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