Blog of the week
Nick Denton, former Financial Times journalist, co-founder of the First Tuesday networking group and founder of Moreover.com , is a Brit with a nose for technology topics and trends, so the news that he's putting together a series of weblog media businesses means that bloggers everywhere should take heed. After all, deals could be done with this man. So, with a modicum of self interest in mind, Rainy Day is pleased to nominate nickdenton.org as its Blog of the week.
Denton's paid his dues. He left the security of the FT ship to try his hand at entrepreneurism is England, a bold move, and he then headed to Silicon Valley when the building out of Moreover.com needed tending to. After parting company with Moreover, he moved to New York, his new home and the base now for his nanopublishing venture, the first fruits of which are Gizmodo and Gawker. Denton says that the two sites cover categories too small to warrant dedicated print publications, but he believes that they'll have an appeal to advertisers sufficient to support a skeleton editorial operation.
Gizmodo, which launched in August, is a blog for the gadget addict. Designed by Mena Trott and edited by Pete Rojas, it profiles half a dozen new items each day, ranging from the tiniest cameras to the lightest laptops. Daft electronic toys feature as well. According to Denton, Gizmodo is already one of the leading destinations for hardcore gadget lovers. The weblog earns commission on its readers' purchases from Amazon.com, and plans to introduce advertising.
Gawker is a blog for Manhattan that will start in January. The target audience is the Big Apple's media and financial elite and the business model is advertising support, mainly from real estate brokers and luxury goods retailers. Jason Kottke is the designer and the site will be edited by Elizabeth Spiers.
Gawker will be followed by Blogwire (working title), which will "mine the editorial selections and commentary on weblogs to produce an improved personalized news service to consumers." The stories which have generated the most buzz in the blogging community will be identified and readers will be able to track the writings of their favourite bloggers. Meg Hourihan and Cameron Marlow will be contributing to the project. Denton knows a lot about news filtering systems so we can expect something impressive.
As has been pointed our a million times already, the Web is still groping for the form of expression that best fits its characteristics. The dominant content models of the moment mirror magazines and newspapers, but this is nothing more than forcing a new medium to conform to existing formats. What the Web is best at is connecting and interacting and this is the strength of the blog. With blogging, we're witnessing the emergence of a first generation tool with enormous potential and credit is due to Nick Denton for having the courage to keep the blog rolling.
