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Fast Company

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Fast Company
Winter 2023 cover, featuring Marques Brownlee
EditorBrendan Vaughan
CategoriesBusiness magazine
FrequencyQuarterly
PublisherFast Company, Inc.
Total circulation
(June 2012)		757,858[1]
First issueNovember 1995
CompanyMansueto Ventures
CountryUSA
LanguageEnglish
Websitewww.fastcompany.com Edit this at Wikidata
ISSN1085-9241

Fast Company is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year.

History

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Fast Company was launched in November 1995[2][3] by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, two former Harvard Business Review editors, and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.[4][5] The publication's early competitors included Red Herring, Business 2.0 and The Industry Standard.[6]

In 1997, Fast Company created an online social network, the "Company of Friends" which spawned a number of groups that began meeting.[7] At one point the Company of Friends had over 40,000 members in 120 cities, although by 2003 that number had declined to 8,000.[8]

In 2000, Zuckerman sold Fast Company to Gruner + Jahr, majority owned by media giant Bertelsmann, for $550 million.[9] Just as the sale was completed, the dot-com bubble burst, leading to significant losses and a decline in circulation. Webber and Taylor left the magazine two years later in 2002, and John A. Byrne, previously a senior writer and former management editor with BusinessWeek, was brought in as the new editor. Under Byrne, the magazine won its first Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious honor in business journalism.[10] But the magazine could not reverse its financial decline in the wake of the dot-com bust. Although the magazine was not specifically about Internet commerce, advertising pages continued to drop until they were one-third the 2000 numbers.[8]

In 2005, Gruner + Jahr put the magazine, as well as Inc. magazine, up for sale. Byrne contacted entrepreneur Joe Mansueto and helped guide him through the sale. A bidding war ultimately ensued, pitting The Economist against Mansueto's company Mansueto Ventures. Mansueto, the only bidder who promised to keep Fast Company alive, ultimately won the contest, buying both magazine titles for $35 million.[11]

Under former editor-in-chief Robert Safian,[12] Fast Company was named by the American Society of Magazine Editors as the magazine of the year in 2014.[13]

Stephanie Mehta was named editor-in-chief in February 2018,[14] having previously worked at Vanity Fair, Bloomberg, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal. Fast Company is owned by Mansueto Ventures and is headquartered in Manhattan.

In September 2022 the Fast Company website, fastcompany.com, fell victim to an attack and racist messages were sent.[15] The site was compromised and access to the site was used to send push notifications that the company identified as "obscene and racist." The site was taken offline for eight days as a result.[16][17]

In 2024 the company won The Society Of Publication Designers (SPD) silver medal for its “World Changing Ideas” and six gold medals for its projects, including “Selena Gomez and the Meteoric Rise of Rare Beauty”, “YouTube’s Game Day”, “Brands That Matter”, “The Recommender Gift Guide”. It also won gold in the Best Of Science/Business/Technology category, and for the redesign of the magazine, which launched with the Eva Longoria issue.[18]

Website

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Launched in 1995,[19] FastCompany.com covers leadership and innovation in business, environmental and social issues, entertainment and marketing, and, through its Co.Design site, the intersection of business and design, from architecture to electronics, consumer products to fashion. Fast Company also previously operated sites called Co.Labs, Co.Exist, and Co.Create. Co.Exist and Co.Create were rebranded as Ideas and Entertainment sections in 2017.[20][21] Co.Labs was shut down in early 2015.[22]

Franchises

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Fast Company operates several franchises, such as "Most Innovative Companies", "World Changing Ideas", "Innovation By Design", and "Most Creative People". For its Most Innovative Companies feature, Fast Company assesses thousands of businesses to create a list of 50 companies it considers the most innovative.[23] The Most Creative People in Business is a list of 100 people from different industries.[24]

References

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  1. ^ "eCirc for Consumer Magazines". Alliance for Audited Media. June 30, 2012. Archived from the original on January 23, 2017. Retrieved December 2, 2012.
  2. ^ Vanderbilt, Tom (March 5, 2000). "The capitalist cell". The New York Times.
  3. ^ Alex French. "The Very First Issues of 19 Famous Magazines". Mental Floss. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
  4. ^ "A Brief History of Our Time". Fast Company. March 1, 2006. Archived from the original on April 4, 2012. Retrieved October 27, 2012.
  5. ^ "About Us". Fast Company. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  6. ^ Bercovici, Jeff (February 2001). "Business 2.0 is put up for sale". Media Life Magazine. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved November 25, 2014.
  7. ^ Alex Kuczynski (December 14, 1998). "Cultivating A Cult Audience; Fast Company Magazine Takes 'Community of Readers' Idea To New Extremes". The New York Times. Retrieved June 5, 2009.
  8. ^ a b Carr, David (August 11, 2003). "Fast Company's New Life in the Slow Lane". The New York Times. Retrieved November 25, 2014.
  9. ^ Johnston, David Cay (May 2005). "Bertelsmann to Exit U.S. Magazine Market". The New York Times. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  10. ^ Friedman, Jon. "Fast Company finally gets some 'help'". MarketWatch.
  11. ^ Seelye, Katherine Q. (June 21, 2005). "Gruner + Jahr sells 2 U.S. magazines". The New York Times.
  12. ^ Fox, Rebecca (January 2007). "Breaking: Bob Safian Named Editor/Managing Director of Fast Company". Adweek. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  13. ^ "National Magazine Awards 2014 Winners Announced". American Society of Magazine Editors. New York. May 1, 2014. Archived from the original on July 19, 2015. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  14. ^ Dool, Greg (February 2018). "Breaking: Fast Company Names Stephanie Mehta Editor-in-Chief". Folio. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  15. ^ "Media company hacked, racist push notifications sent to Apple iPhones". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved October 5, 2022.
  16. ^ "Fast Company shuts website after hack sends 'obscene' Apple News notifications". Reuters. September 2022. Retrieved September 30, 2022.
  17. ^ "Fast Company returns after attack that saw obscene Apple News alerts pushed to readers". Engadget. October 6, 2022. Retrieved October 21, 2022.
  18. ^ "THE SOCIETY OF PUBLICATION DESIGNERS ANNOUNCES THE 59th ANNUAL AWARDS WINNERS" (PDF). THE SOCIETY OF PUBLICATION DESIGNERS. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 14, 2024.
  19. ^ "ICANN WhoIs fastcompany.com". Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  20. ^ Clendaniel, Morgan (June 2, 1995). "Some News From Your Friends At Co.Exist". ICANN WhoIs. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  21. ^ Alt, Eric (March 22, 2017). "A Message To Our Readers". fastcompany.com. New York. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  22. ^ Robischon, Noah (March 24, 2015). "What's Next For Co.Labs?". Fast Company. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  23. ^ "Most Innovative Companies: Top 10 by Industry". Fast Company website. February 18, 2010. Archived from the original on June 4, 2012. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
  24. ^ "The Most Creative People in Business 2012". Fast Company. 2012.
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