HipGuide is a city guide, founded in 1998 by former Accenture consultant, Syl Tang. Over 562,300 hipsters, including various celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Jay-Z read it. Nielsen NetRatings audited April 2009 The internet site also has HipBites, an emailed magazine that reports on what’s new in the way of hotels, bars, restaurants, and shopping in one of its nine flagship cities. Additionally, the magazine often spotlights other more far-flung cities, such as Sydney or Shanghai, and also includes interviews with authors, special deals for readers etc.
One of Yahoo’s and the BBC’s recommended city guides, HipGuide is read by more than a thousand media outlets, amongst them the New York Times, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Bazaar and the Financial Times. HipGuide also supply original editorial for a variety of media companies, detailing trends, new openings, fashion fads and so on. Tang herself is involved in consulting dozens of product companies interested in enticing a target audience that, like HipGuide readers, will pay to stay one step ahead of the pack. Most notably, she created a plan to help the State of Michigan retain and attract trend-setters as part of their Cool Cities Initiative. According to Google, HipGuide gets more than 2 million hits per month.