Hansen shows that Wired is reprising all of its mistakes from the last bubble. "Our vision is to not just be a magazine publisher covering technology, but to be a developer of these things," he says. Of a photo-gallery tool for the website, he says: "We’re hoping to have something to show that will blow people’s minds." Has he been eating Wired founder Louis Rossetto's chocolate?

If I sound like a grumpy old fellow who's seen this all before, it's because I have, first-hand. The sports venture isn't the only repetitive pattern I've spotted. In 1996, Wired bought Suck.com, giving the cultural-critique website enough of a budget to hire unskilled 24-year-olds as copy boys. In 2006, Wired bought Reddit, which lets anyone build their own version of Suck.com (except not as good, because none of Reddit's users are as funny as Joey Anuff, Carl Steadman, or Ana Marie Cox).

What's different now? Oh, sure, we can talk about Internet adoption, broadband, open-source software. Whatever. What has really changed is that now, instead of public shareholders funding Wired's wild experiments, advertisers are willing to foot the bill.

And that is perhaps the biggest reason for Hansen's newfound enthusiasm. He's looking forward to putting ads for sugary electrolyte drinks on his new sports blog. Which only makes us think of OK Soda.

When Wired cofounder Louis Rossetto ran the magazine and HotWired in the 1990s — a period, I should disclose, which includes my employment there — he never stopped talking about the company's seemingly limitless future. His pitch, tinged with equal parts Barnum and McLuhan, always boiled down to this: "Get Wired." I chided Hansen for being too low-key about Wired's online successes, and its new ventures, like the TBD HotWired. Rossetto saw no conflict between being a journalist and a marketer. He believed that while Wired reported on the digital revolution, HotWired would live it. He would never have described a product as "TBD." He would have gone with "TBA" instead: to be amazing.

Wired cofounder Louis Rossetto explained in the magazine's 15th anniversay issue:

Faced with fierce competition for those eyeballs, Old Media is hawking the apocalypse: The world is inundated by war, poverty, destruction, fascist Republicans! It's about to be swept away by tidal waves unleashed by melting polar ice caps! More on how this is humanity's own fault — after the break.

TCHO is a new kind of chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.

TCHO is where technology meets chocolate; where Silicon Valley start-up meets San Francisco food culture.

TCHO is obsessively good dark chocolate.

TCHO is a direct, transparent connection between the farmers and the consumers, from the pod to the palate, from high concept to sensual experience.

TCHO is an innovative method for you to discover the chocolate you like best.
The Company.

TCHO is serious about chocolate, we aren’t just “re–melters” (like the majority of people who work with chocolate), we are manufacturers, with our very own factory capable of producing 4000 metric tons per year — joining only a dozen other major manufacturers in the US.

TCHO was founded by a Space Shuttle technologist turned chocolate maker and a grizzled industry veteran who set up chocolate factories for 40 years from Costa Rica to Germany.

TCHO’s team has deep experience from Silicon Valley to Berlin, from Fair Trade to Ferraris, from chocolate start up to Web start up.

TCHO isn’t funded by VCs or investment bankers, but friends and families brought together to invest in a dream. And every employee is an owner.

TCHO is scrappy and high tech – recycling and refurbing legacy chocolate equipment and mating it with the latest process control, information, and communications systems.

TCHO’s social mission is the next step beyond Fair Trade – helping farmers by transferring knowledge of how to grow and ferment better beans so they can escape commodity production to become premium producers.
The Factory.

TCHO is located in the heart of San Francisco, at Pier 17 on the legendary San Francisco waterfront, between Fisherman’s Wharf and the Ferry Building, and five minutes from SF landmarks the Transamerica Pyramid and Coit Tower.

TCHO will be the only chocolate factory in San Francisco.

TCHO’s tasting room will be a gracious and remarkable space in which to experience TCHO’s chocolates and drinks.

TCHO’s factory is large enough to enable us to have impact with the growers in order to acquire the best beans, and is small enough to lavish attention on creating obsessively good chocolate.
The Chocolate.

TCHO’s obsessively good dark chocolate is limited edition varietals and origins, in original, innovative packaging.

TCHO chocolate is available only at our factory store, and on our website.

TCHO encourages our customers to help us develop our products, as we launch limited run, “beta editions“ available only at the factory to those who join our flavor testers.

TCHO is a new way to discover your chocolate. “Dark,” “percentage cacao,” and recently “varietal” and “origin” have been placeholders for knowing what the chocolate you are about to put in your mouth actually tastes like. TCHO has developed a new method (taxonomy) to help you find the chocolate you like, using common-sense descriptors like Nutty, Fruity, or Chocolatey.
The Experience.

TCHO is about helping you become a knowledgeable enthusiast, since without context and meaning complete enjoyment of chocolate is impossible.

TCHO’s website connects our customers to the minds making TCHO, as well as to each other.

TCHO’s tour will be a multimedia exploration of how chocolate is made, how TCHO makes chocolate, and of chocolate culture.

TCHO creates new rituals for sharing chocolate.

Those discovering Wired today, in its Condé Nastified state, would have little reason to note Rossetto's name listed on the masthead as "founding editor." An odd title. Rossetto didn't found as much as confound. Reprinted below is his infamous "Bengali Typhoon" manifesto from the first issue of Wired, which perversely, you can't find on Wired's website. It rings just as true today as it did 12 years ago. My first thought on seeing it again: I'd like to read that magazine.

Why Wired?

Because the digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon — while the mainstream media is still groping for the snooze button. And because the computer "press" is too busy churning out the latest PCINFOCOMPUTINGCORPORATEWORLD iteration of its ad sales formula cum parts catalog to discuss the meaning or context of SOCIAL CHANGES SO PROFOUND their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire.

There are a lot of magazines about technology. Wired is not one of them. Wired is about the most powerful people on the planet today — THE digital GENERATION. These are the people who not only foresaw how the merger of computers, telecommunications and the media is transforming life at the cusp of the new millennium, they are making it happen.

OUR FIRST INSTRUCTION TO OUR WRITERS: AMAZE US.

Our second: We know a lot about digital technology, and we are bored with it. Tell us something we've never heard before, in a way we've never seen before. If it challenges our assumptions, so much the better.

So why now? Why Wired? Because in the age of information overload, THE ULTIMATE LUXURY IS MEANING AND CONTEXT.

Or put another way, if you're looking for the soul of our new society in wild metamorphosis, our advice is simple. Get Wired.

— L.R.

• Chairman: The traditional classic. As powerful as the board wants him to be.
• Founder: "Gone, daddy, gone." Louis Rossetto gets "Founding Editor" on the Wired Magazine masthead. Louis Rossetto hasn't edited a thing for Wired since Providence Equity seized control of Wired in 1997.
• Vice chairman: Extra gone.
• Chief Technology Officer: Great place to stick a nerdy founder who can't manage people. He attends conferences while the VP of engineering builds software.
• Chief Strategy Officer: Flip side of the CTO — he knows people but is totally faking the tech side.
• Chief [Name of Company]-er: Let's put it this way: When's the last time Yahoo CEO Terry Semel gave the stage up for "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang?

BONUS CHAT TRANSCRIPT:

Valleywag: And if you really do want the CEO to keep doing something — what do you make them?
Valley vet: CEO.
Wag: Really, a CEO has nowhere to go?
Vet: If they're useful, why move them? But Eric Schmidt shows that the CEO title doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Earlier: Bubblewatch: Folded and fucked [Valleywag]
Photo: Philip Kaplan [Noah Glass on Flickr]