Type of site | Product reviews |
---|---|
Founded | September 2011 |
Owner | The New York Times Company |
Founder(s) | Brian Lam |
Editor | Ben Frumin (as of 2020) [1] |
URL | www |
Commercial | yes |
Wirecutter (formerly known as The Wirecutter) is a product review website owned by The New York Times Company. It was founded by Brian Lam in 2011 and purchased by The New York Times Company in 2016 for about $30 million. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Wirecutter is mostly a list of amazing gadgets. [...] The point is to make it easier for you to buy some great gear quickly and get on with your life.
The choices I've made here took days of research and years of experience, interviews, data from the best editorial and user sources around. Most gadgets I choose here aren't the top of the line models that are loaded up with junk features or overpriced; most of the ones we've picked are of the "good enough" or "great enough" variety, because this is generally where our needs and the right prices smash into each other.
These are the same gadgets I'd recommend to my friends and family, and these are the same gadgets I'd choose for myself.
The site focuses on writing detailed guides to different categories of consumer products which recommend just one or two best items in the category. It earns most of its revenue from affiliate marketing by including links to its recommendations. [7] To prevent bias, the staff who write its reviews are not informed about what commissions, if any, the site receives for different products. [8] Due to affiliate revenue, the site is less reliant than other blogs and news sites on advertising revenue, although the Wirecutter site has displayed banner ads in the past. [9]
Wirecutter has partnered with other websites including Engadget (as of 2015) to provide guest posts sponsored by the company. [10] In 2015, Amazon tested a partnership with Wirecutter on a similar sponsored posts format on Amazon's site for recommendations. [11] [12] While Wirecutter does perform their own testing of products, they also draw on and cite other reviews by sites like Ravingtechnology, Topyten, Consumer Reports, Reviewed, CNET, and America's Test Kitchen, often using those reviews to filter a large range of products on the market down to a small number of candidates for testing.
Brian Lam founded the site in 2011 after leaving the editor-in-chief position at Gizmodo. [13] It was originally part of The Awl . [14] In the five years from its launch in 2011 to 2016, the company generated $150 million in revenue from affiliate programs with its merchant partners. [15] [16] A sibling site called The Sweethome was started in 2013 and focused on home goods while The Wirecutter itself focused on electronics and tools. [17] After forming an editorial partnership with The New York Times in 2015, [18] The Wirecutter was acquired by the Times in October 2016 for a reported $30 million. [2] Ben French spearheaded the acquisition, recalling "The first day I ever met [Brian Lam], after spending an hour or two with him, I was like, 'We should buy you. I want to work with you.' For me, it was love at first sight." [19] The Wirecutter and Sweethome were combined into a single site in 2017, a year after the Times acquisition. [8] [20]
Lam announced he had hired Jacqui Cheng as editor-in-chief for The Wirecutter in December 2013. [21] After the Times acquisition, David Perpich was appointed to President and General Manager of The Wirecutter in March 2017. [22] When Cheng stepped down in September 2018, the staff had grown from under 10 to over 100 employees. [23] [24] Ben Frumin succeeded Cheng in December 2018. [25] The Wirecutter Union was formed in 2019 with approximately 65 employees, affiliated with NewsGuild-CWA of New York. [26] [27] By 2020, Wirecutter had approximately 150 employees, with the majority working remotely away from the headquarters in Long Island City. [28]
In August 2021, the New York Times imposed a metered paywall on the site, no longer depending solely on affiliate marketing commissions for revenue. [29] Later that year, Wirecutter staff went on strike, timed to coincide with the busy Black Friday shopping season in late November. The reporting structure of Wirecutter under Perpich was largely independent from the rest of the Times and the two pay scales were significantly different; Perpich was described as "disappointed" at the decision to strike. [30] The Wirecutter Union reached a three-year agreement with The New York Times Company in December, with immediate wage increases averaging US$5,000 per employee. [27]
Wirecutter has been described as a competitor to Consumer Reports, from which it differs by its explicit recommendations of top picks, a younger readership (with average age between 41 and 53 as of 2018), and its acceptance of vendor-supplied test units. [23] Similar recommendation websites that compete with Wirecutter include Best Products (Hearst Communications, 2015), The Strategist (New York, 2016), BuzzFeed Reviews (BuzzFeed, 2018), and The Inventory (G/O Media, 2018). [31]
Wirecutter defines the Wirecutter effect as a phenomenon "in which recommendations become so popular that they sell out". [32]
The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes The New York Times, its associated publications, and other media properties. Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City.
Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been often referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is often regarded as one of the world's most valuable brands. It is considered to be one of the Big Five American technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Microsoft.
Avon Products, Inc. or simply known as Avon, is an American-British multinational cosmetics, skin care, perfume and personal care company, based in London. It sells directly to the public. Avon had annual sales of $9.1 billion worldwide in 2020.
McAfee Corp., formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company headquartered in San Jose, California.
Comcast Corporation, incorporated and headquartered in Philadelphia, is the largest American multinational telecommunications and media conglomerate. The corporation is the second-largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue, and is also the largest pay-TV company, the largest cable TV company, and largest home Internet service provider in the United States. Comcast is additionally the nation's third-largest home telephone service provider. It provides services to U.S. residential and commercial customers in 40 states and the District of Columbia. As the owner of the international media company NBCUniversal since 2011, Comcast is also a high-volume producer of feature films for theatrical exhibition, and over-the-air and cable television programming.
Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint, the small business accounting program QuickBooks, the credit monitoring service Credit Karma, and email marketing platform Mailchimp. As of 2019, more than 95% of its revenues and earnings come from its activities within the United States.
PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the food and beverage market. It oversees the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of its products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito-Lay, Inc. PepsiCo has since expanded from its namesake product Pepsi Cola to an immensely diversified range of food and beverage brands. The largest and most recent acquisition was Pioneer Foods in 2020 for US$1.7 billion and prior to it was buying the Quaker Oats Company in 2001, which added the Gatorade brand to the Pepsi portfolio and Tropicana Products in 1998.
Lam Research Corporation is an American supplier of wafer-fabrication equipment and related services to the semiconductor industry. Its products are used primarily in front-end wafer processing, which involves the steps that create the active components of semiconductor devices and their wiring (interconnects). The company also builds equipment for back-end wafer-level packaging (WLP) and for related manufacturing markets such as for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).
Sensient Technologies is a global manufacturer and marketer of colors, flavors and fragrances based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their products are used in many foods and beverages, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, home and personal care products, specialty printing and imaging products, computer imaging and industrial colors. Sensient reported revenue of $1,468 million in 2013. Subdivisions include the Sensient Flavors & Fragrances Group and the Sensient Color Group. Within the Flavors & Fragrances Group is Sensient Natural Ingredients. In 2021, Sensient was ranked 10th on the Global Top 50 Food Flavors and Fragrances Companies list.
Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wireless, storage, and industrial markets. As of 2022, some 78 percent of Broadcom's revenue was coming from its semiconductor-based products and 22 percent from its infrastructure software products and services.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American supplier of analytical instruments, life sciences solutions, specialty diagnostics, laboratory, pharmaceutical and biotechnology services. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher was formed through the merger of Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific in 2006. Thermo Fisher Scientific has acquired other reagent, consumable, instrumentation, and service providers, including Life Technologies Corporation (2013), Alfa Aesar (2015), Affymetrix (2016), FEI Company (2016), BD Advanced Bioprocessing (2018), and PPD (2021).
Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, more commonly known as Labcorp, is an American healthcare company headquartered in Burlington, North Carolina. It operates one of the largest clinical laboratory networks in the world, with a United States network of 36 primary laboratories. Before a merger with National Health Laboratory in 1995, the company operated under the name Roche BioMedical. Labcorp performs its largest volume of specialty testing at its Center for Esoteric Testing in Burlington, North Carolina, where the company is headquartered. As of 2018, Labcorp processes 2.5 million lab tests weekly.
Trellix is a privately held cybersecurity company founded in 2022. It has been involved in the detection and prevention of major cybersecurity attacks. It provides hardware, software, and services to investigate cybersecurity attacks, protect against malicious software, and analyze IT security risks.
Brian Lam is a writer, best known for his work with Gizmodo, a blog focusing on technology; and The Wirecutter, a recommendation website for gadgets.
The Awl was a website about "news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day" based in New York City. Its motto was "Be Less Stupid."
Vox Media, Inc. is an American mass media company based in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The company was established in November 2011 by Jim Bankoff and Trei Brundrett to encompass SB Nation and The Verge. Bankoff had been the CEO for SB Nation since 2009.
The Daily Dot is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, The Daily Dot is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
Gadget Flow is a New York City-based curated e-commerce marketplace launched in 2012 in Greece by Evan Varsamis, Cassie Ousta, and Mike Chliounakis. At 22 million visits per month it is among the largest product-search engines with an emphasis on researching products from Amazon, Etsy, Kickstarter, IndieGogo and other crowdfunding platforms.