Over the course of the summer, Mr. Kutcher, whose technological prowess is part of his brand image, helped the magazine develop an online-only version that is being promoted beginning this week through Web sites and apps like Facebook, Flipboard, Tumblr and Twitter. Daniel Peres, the editor of Details, said of Mr. Kutcher, “This guy doesn’t just tweet a lot, he’s completely immersed in the world of technology.”
One can imagine the corporate pressure on magazine editors to better engage online readers, though Mr. Peres said he had some reservations about hiring Mr. Kutcher as a guest editor. During a conference call among the actor and several editors, he proposed their worst fear: a fashion shoot starring the upstart moguls of Silicon Valley.
“We didn’t want a portfolio of a bunch of nerds,” Mr. Peres said.
Andrea Oliveri, the editorial projects director, added, “When I think of the tech guy, I think of Jesse Eisenberg in that movie, sitting in a meeting with shower shoes and bad hair.”
But it turned out not to be so difficult to make social media moguls sexy, once Mr. Kutcher talked them into it.
Ms. Oliveri, who orchestrated the photo shoot of several of them in Silicon Valley, said she was surprised to discover that Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, had recently undergone an image overhaul and now has a closet full of Dior Homme suits. “He’s giving me Matt Bomer lately,” she said, comparing Mr. Dorsey to the heartthrob TV star. Suddenly she was seeing digerati hunks everywhere: Charlie Cheever, a founder of Quora, and even Dennis Crowley, a gawky founder of Foursquare, who was named one of the 15 worst-dressed men of Silicon Valley just this month by the Details rival GQ. For Details, Mr. Crowley was spiffed up in a shirt by Steven Alan and pants by Oliver Spencer.
Mr. Kutcher’s issue, which would encompass about 30 pages if you were to, heaven forbid, print it out, also includes features like his “10 commandments of style,” personal pictures taken with his (one shows Demi Moore posed as if she were kissing the Sphinx), a social media makeover of one of his employees, a social-media etiquette essay and Fancy pages created by people like Simon Spurr and Carmelo Anthony.
Now, don’t feel bad if you find yourself asking, “What’s a Fancy page?” The Details editors had never heard of it, either, but Mr. Kutcher assured them that TheFancy.com is the next big thing, a site where you can assemble images of things you like so people know what to buy you for presents. Before long, Mr. Peres and Ms. Oliveri, too, were speaking a language that included words like Airbnb, Hipmunk and LikeALittle, just to mention a few of Mr. Kutcher’s favorites.
“We’re playing catch-up a little bit,” Mr. Peres said in reference to the magazine’s online efforts. “Starting to define ourselves in a distinct way in this space is certainly a goal.”
ONLINE or not, it speaks well of the issue that it still looks as if it came from Details. The only thing a little squirmy about it is that Mr. Kutcher may be a bit too close to his subject. He is an investor in several of the technology start-ups that he is promoting in the magazine, including Flipboard, which makes apps that streamline content from multiple sources like magazines and Facebook pages. Mr. Peres said that this was ultimately deemed not to be a problem.
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