The Site

The homepage itself resembles the basic premise behind the magazine counterpart. According to the former editor of the magazine Keith Blanchard in the mission statement, "Maxim is a humor magazine, albeit a calculatedly unofficial one. Whatever the subject, we are unapologetically irreverent. We mock everybody, starting and ending with ourselves. Every caption is designed to amuse you, whether or not you care about the story in question." The web site carries this philosophy through with its design and content. When browsers open the homepage, a toolbar provides navigation throughout the site, which covers typical Maxim areas, girls, sports, entertainment and jokes. The site is no different than its offline counterpart when it comes to irreverant humor. For example, the feature Best of the Web 2004's caption reads, "Stop looking at porn for 10 minutes and peek our handy, penetration-free guide to the Internet!" The site also archives material from the magazine, enhancing it with multimedia, such as video, audio and flash animations.

With the site there is also the ability for browsers to interact with it. Flash-based games, such as Bush's Spelling Bee where you try and spell words President Bush is using, are an example of this and how multimedia sticks to the philosophy on the site. Senior editor of the site Jordan Burchette explains that there is a reader response feature on every page to stimulate interactivity, and the editors encourage browsers to submit personal stories relevent to features that are being produced.

Hear about an experience of interactivity gone awry from Burchette. (Part 1)(Part 2)

Vital Stats:

Launch: February 14, 2000
35 Million-plus monthly page views
1.5 Million-plus unique monthly users
Average user time per session is 7:43 minutes · 90% of traffic is from the U.S. (Stats according to Dennispublishing.com)

Across the site

Girls of Maxim: What Maxim is known for is its pictorials featuring scantily clad starlets. This aspect of the site archives all the women that have been featured in the magazine as well as contains features. These include Maxim's Hometown Hotties, which is a contest that searches for the most attractive local girl and Girlfriend of the Day, which features a brief interview with a young starlet concerning men and dating, while offering a few photos.

The World of Sex: This link offers men advice on sex and dating all while providing the same humor Maxim is known for. Your Sex Questions and Found Porn, which runs in the magazine, are two of the features in this department.

Jokes: The department offers a single joke for the day across a wide variety of categories, such as blondes, religion and foreigners.

Entertainment: For those familiar with the book, this section basically resembles the Hot Zone department, which covers the latest trends in movies, music, books, television, DVD and video games.

Grit: Grit is essentially home to many of Maxim's feature stories from the magazine. A web-only feature here is The Worst Job of the Week.

Sports: This section of the page covers sports the only way Maxim knows how: with lots of girls, guys drinking beer and cheeky humor. It features exclusive interviews and content with pro athletes as well as photo and video galleries of female athletes featured in the magazine. Burchette's NCAA football column can also be found here.

Maximwear: This is Maxim's guide to the hottest fashions for men. It features a monthly buying guide and other fashion features from the magazine.

The Ride: This section of the site features specs on the latest in automotive technology. It covers car models on the horizon, as well as the latest gear to soup your car up.

Gear: This site covers the latest gadgets offering a cheeky review of the product as well as its price. This link actually covers all the site's topics, chronicling the newest gear in sports, entertainment and other areas. This department on the site basically is a take of Top Gear from the magazine.


Check out Maxim Online's Mission Statement