Nick Denton

Curiously, the blog publishing company Gawker Media does not have its own web site, so we link here to the personal blog of its CEO and founder, Nick Denton, who blogs there mostly about his business, anymore. A former staff reporter for the Financial Times and later founder of headline syndication service Moreover and co-founder of the social networking service First Tuesday, Denton was a pioneer in gambling that blogs could become a viable commercial publishing medium. To date, he has contracted freelance writers to write four successful blogs:

• Gawker – gossip about media personalities and other NYC goings on
• Gizmodo – a digest of new gadgets for tech junkies
• Fleshbot – a tongue-in-cheek (so to speak) review of online pornography
• Wonkette – political trash talk

UPDATE: Since this original post, Gawker Media has released Defamer, an LA gossip blog.

Denton has announced plans for more blogs on various topics including interior design and travel. He says he draws his inspiration for topics for the companys’ blogs according to popularity of search topics on Google.

I have counseled Gawker Media periodically, primarily about advertising revenue strategies.

In March this year, Denton’s strongest rival among commercial blog publishers, Weblogs, Inc‘s Jason Calacanis, poached the original writer of Gizmodo, Pete Rojas, and launched a knock-off site, Engadget. After a month (as of this posting), a review of both sites on Alexa, suggests that Gizmodo has maintained its audience’s loyalty and Engadget has some catching up to do.

In April, Denton also launched Kinja, a kind of blog portal designed to make blog surfing easier for the masses.

Link