Wired launches new global app
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Wired global editorial director Katie Drummond and San Francisco Mayer Daniel Lurie on stage in San Francisco on Dec. 4, 2025. Photo: Kimberly White/Getty Images for Wired
Wired, the tech publication owned by Condé Nast, is launching a global app this week that will feature a more personalized and interactive experience aimed at its most loyal readers.
Why it matters: With traffic referrals declining in the AI era, Wired's global editorial director Katie Drummond says she wants the brand to focus on serving fewer, more engaged readers who can interact with its journalists on its own platforms.
- "Ultimately, I am very comfortable with the idea that Wired's audience in the future is a smaller audience, but we want that audience to be loyal," Drummond said in an interview.
Zoom in: The app launches this week on iOS and Android globally.
- It will feature a personalized daily digest of top Wired stories tailored to users' interests. It will also allow subscribers to customize notifications and follow their favorite writers.
- The app will include new features meant to bolster its community relationships, such as extended story comment features and live "AMA" question-and-answer forums with Wired journalists and experts.
- It will also include a vertical feed of short-form videos in a dedicated tab that will include original reports. Exclusive audio playlists featuring story, interview and podcast episodes will be available to subscribers.
Between the lines: The app is free to download. For a short time, anyone can access Wired's content through the app, but after Nov. 9, only a limited set of content will be available to nonsubscribers.
Zoom out: Over the past few years, Wired has leaned further into original reporting and investigations as a way to attract subscribers.
- As part of that push, it expanded its coverage of the intersection of tech and U.S. government and politics. It broke a number of major stories related to the administration's DOGE cuts in 2024.
- Drummond said the company has beat its subscription targets every year since she took over as the outlet's editorial head in 2023.
- Seeing the engagement and loyalty of Wired's subscribers meaningfully increase served as a signal to the leadership of Wired and its parent Condé Nast that it needed to invest in an app to super-serve paid readers.
The intrigue: Noticeably absent from Wired's new app is an AI interface or chatbot.
- Drummond said she didn't see any value in readers talking to a robot.
- "I really think that some publishers are overestimating the degree to which users want to spend time with them in the context of a robotic conversation. I think people want to connect with people, and that's our bet."
The big picture: With AI search causing organic search traffic to crater, more publishers are eyeing ways to develop direct reader relationships and app improvements.
- People debuted a new TikTok-like app last year. The New York Times introduced a vertical video feed to its app months later.
The bottom line: The mass reset facing the media industry is existential, but it presents a unique opportunity, per Drummond.
- "I think publications can come out stronger on the other end of it, if they have the right support and the right infrastructure and strategy."
