The Verge

Origins

Between March and April 2011, up to nine of Engadget's writers, editors, and product developers, including editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, left AOL, the company behind that website, to start a new gadget site.^[12][13][14] The other departing editors included managing editor Nilay Patel and staffers Paul Miller, Ross Miller, Joanna Stern, Chris Ziegler, as well as product developers Justin Glow and Dan Chilton.^[12][15][16] In early April 2011, Topolsky announced that their unnamed new site would be produced in partnership with sports news website SB Nation, debuting some time in the fall.^[15][17] Topolsky lauded SB Nation's similar interest in the future of publishing, including what he described as their beliefs in independent journalism and in-house development of their own content delivery tools.^[15][16] SB Nation's Jim Bankoff saw an overlap in the demographics of the two sites and an opportunity to expand SB Nation's model.^[15] Bankoff previously worked at AOL in 2005, where he led their Engadget acquisition.^[18] Other news outlets viewed the partnership as positive for both SB Nation and Topolsky's staff, and negative for AOL's outlook.^{[19][20][21][22]}

Bankoff, chairman and CEO of Vox Media (owner of SB Nation), said in a 2011 interview that though the company had started out with a focus on sports, other categories including consumer technology had growth potential for the company.^[23] Development of Vox Media's content management system (CMS), Chorus, was led by Trei Brundrett, who later became the chief operating officer for the company.^[24]

This Is My Next

Following news of his untitled partnership with SB Nation in April 2011, Topolsky announced that the Engadget podcast hosted by Patel, Paul Miller, and himself would continue at an interim site called This Is My Next.^[15][25] By August 2011, the site had reached 1 million unique visitors and 3.4 million page views.^[25] By October 2011, the site had 3 million unique views per month and 10 million total page views.^[2] Time listed the site in its Best Blogs of 2011,^[25] calling the prototype site "exemplary".^[26] The site closed upon The Verge's launch on November 1, 2011.^{[citation needed]}

On June 11, 2014, The Verge launched a new section called "This Is My Next", edited by former editor David Pierce, as a buyer's guide for consumer electronics.^[27] By 2022, this section had been retitled simply "Buying Guide".^[28]

Launch

The Verge launched November 1, 2011,^[4] along with an announcement of a new parent company: Vox Media.^[2] According to the company, the site launched with 4 million unique visitors and 20 million pageviews.^[29] At the time of Topolsky's departure, Engadget had 14 million unique visitors.^[12][21] Vox Media overall doubled its unique visitors to about 15 million during the last half of 2012.^[29] The Verge had 12 former Engadget staffers working with Topolsky at the time of launch.^[2] It hired Tom Warren, former Neowin editor-in-chief and WinRumors blogger, as their new United Kingdom based senior editor.^[30] In 2013, The Verge launched a new science section, Verge Science, with former Wired editor Katie Drummond leading the effort.^[31] Patel replaced Topolsky as editor-in-chief in mid-2014.^[32] Journalist Walt Mossberg joined The Verge's editing team after Vox Media acquired Recode in 2015.^[3] By 2016, the website's advertising had shifted from display advertisements, matched with articles' contents, to partnerships and advertisements adjusted to the user.^[33]

2016–present

Vox Media revamped The Verge's visual design for its fifth anniversary in November 2016.^[34] Its logo featured a modified Penrose triangle, an impossible object.^[35] On November 1, The Verge launched version 3.0 of its news platform, offering a redesigned website along with the new logo.^[36]

In September 2016, The Verge fired deputy editor Chris Ziegler after it learned that he had been working for Apple since July.^[37] Helen Havlak was promoted to editorial director in mid-2017.^[38] In 2017, The Verge launched "Guidebook" to host technology product reviews.^[39] In May 2018, Verge Science launched a YouTube channel, which had more than 638,000 subscribers and 30 million views by January 2019. The channel received more than 5.3 million views in November 2018 alone.^[40] As of August 2023, the channel has over 100 million views and 1.15 million subscribers.

In March 2022, Dieter Bohn announced his resignation from The Verge in his position of Executive Editor, and that he would be moving to a new position at Google.^[41]

The Verge rebranded and redesigned its website in September 2022 with a sharper, more simplistic logo, more colorful visual design, and new typefaces. Its new home page format resembled a news feed, incorporating external conversations from social media and reporting from other publications. The new format will, in part, reduce aggregation reporting.^[42]

In December 2024, The Verge began to paywall some content behind a subscription service; this offering covers "premium" reports, newsletters, and reviews, as well as fewer advertisements and other features.^[43][44]

Podcasts

The Verge broadcasts a live weekly podcast, The Vergecast. The inaugural episode was November 4, 2011. It included a video stream of the hosts.^[45] A second weekly podcast was introduced on November 8, 2011. Unlike The Vergecast, The Verge Mobile Show was primarily focused on mobile phones.^[46][47] The Verge also launched the weekly podcast Ctrl-Walt-Delete, hosted by Walt Mossberg, in September 2015.^[48] The Verge's What's Tech podcast was named among iTunes's best of 2015.^[49] The podcast Why'd You Push That Button?, launched in 2017 and co-hosted by Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany,^[50] received a Podcast Award in the "This Week in Tech Technology Category" in 2018.^[51][52]

Editor-in-chief Nilay Patel hosts a weekly interview podcast called Decoder.^[53] On February 8th, 2024, Patel announced Decoder would now do two episodes per week.^[54]

Video content