Wired Launches Niche Social Site

Wired Biz to focus on small businesses.

By Jason Fell
08/05/2008

It's not the big social networking site editor Chris Anderson nearly divulged at an industry event in May, but Wired this week became the latest magazine to launch a social networking site for entrepreneurs and business owners.

The site, Wired Biz, launched August 1 and features video of curator and Wired contributing editor Jeff Howe explaining the idea behind what he calls "crowdsourcing," a topic for which he also has written a book. The site, Wired says, gives small business owners a platform for information sharing and "encourages collaborative problem solving."

One feature of Wired Biz is the Small Business Program, which allows members to nominate small businesses that, as Wired puts it, have affected the most global change through innovation. Wired will select five finalists and members will vote for the winner, which will be featured in a custom ad in the print magazine.

"We expect this to be organic community growth with the Small Business Challenge helping to launch and build buzz," a Wired spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to FOLIO:.

Last October, Mansueto Digital, the online arm of Mansueto Ventures, launched IncBizNet, a social networking site targeted at private U.S. businesses. In February, the company launched a social networking platform on FastCompany.com. McGraw-Hill's BusinessWeek in May expanded its own social networking capabilities by partnering with LinkedIn.