Boing Boing

Boing Boing is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won the Bloggies for Weblog of the Year, in 2004 and 2005. The editors are Mark Frauenfelder, David Pescovitz, Carla Sinclair, and Rob Beschizza, and the publisher is Jason Weisberger. One report named Boing Boing as the most popular blog in the world until 2006, when Chinese-language blogs became popular, and it remained among the most widely linked and cited blogs into the 2010s. Boing Boing (originally bOING bOING) started as a zine in 1988 by married duo Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair. Issues were subtitled "The World's Greatest Neurozine". Associate editors included Gareth Branwyn, Jon Lebkowsky, Paco Nathan, and David Pescovitz. 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. The last issue of the zine was #15. Boing Boing was established as a website 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. He relaunched Boing Boing as a weblog on 21 January 2000, describing it as a "directory of wonderful things". Over time, Frauenfelder was joined by four co-editors: Doctorow, Pescovitz, Jardin and Beschizza, all of whom previously contributed to Wired magazine. Maggie Koerth-Baker, after a run as a guest blogger in 2009, joined the site as its Science Editor, leaving to join a Nieman Foundation fellowship in 2014. 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.