Gawker Media Averages More Than 1bn Page Views Yearly After 7 Years

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Gawker MediaToday Erin Pettigrew announced the total traffic Gawker Media has generated in little more than 7 years. Nick Denton announced the first Gawker blog, Gizmodo, on August 14th 2002, some weeks after Peter Rojas started the blog with 6 daily entries. Denton called it a low-risk experiment and wanted to know if someone could make a living from blogging.

I have no idea how much Gizmodo can bring in revenues. All I know is that weblogs are a compelling form, gadget addicts are all online, and Amazon.com’s API makes it easy to connect product with content.

Most importantly, this is a low-risk commercial experiment. Most media companies suffer from overblown editorial, an ad sales force with padded expense accounts, and overly complex publishing systems with a team of primadonna sysadmins to maintain it. By contrast, Gizmodo will be a couple of hours a day of Pete’s link-picking skills, some automatically generated Amazon.com links, and $150-worth of Movable Type. Media has never before been this lean. [Read more…]

Gdgt Launches, Goes Down (But Comes Right Back Up)

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gdgt.gifThe gadget startup gdgt, with Peter Rojas and Ryan Block at the helm, has launched. It is something of a gadget-focused community, mixing in traditional editorial content and reviews, with user generated content and a wiki-like gadget database. That wiki is the killer app, is my bet, although gdgt could do just as well with just its content. After all, they clocked in 4.7 million pageviews with their liveblog from WWDC, pre launch. The power of Rojas and Block is not to underestimated.

And gdgt might very well be an interesting site, surely one to follow. It is not like the predecessors, Engadget or Gizmodo, but more of a social beast, which is interesting. [Read more…]