Have you heard of any of these sites: Gawker.com, Kotaku.com, Deadspin.com, Lifehacker.com, Jezebel.com, io9.com, Jalopink.com, Gizmodo.com. They're all part of a lifestyle blogging conglomerate called Gawker Media; they cover entertainment, sci-fi, technology, and more; and still growing.
Gawker Media is arguably the quintessential blog. They are the brand name blog. Their titles are growing, each one heralded as new and brilliant. The way they put out blogs is similar to movie releases, except they can make money indefinitely by changing the face of their product everyday.
Founded a decade ago they now have an audience of 18.6 million readers. The past ten years have been a haze of nerdy journalistic rockstar controversy. They've been hated by their predecessors (traditional media), the subjects of their content, and even a good deal of their readers. Whether it be love or addiction, they've developed a dedicated viewership.
Staying well informed is crucial in today's web society, it's impossible to stay in conversation if you don't feel like you're aware of the topics. Sites like Reddit and Twitter, keep us in the relevant social loops, but blogs give us our individual style, and let us contribute to the content conversation.
Gawker Media makes a recognizable portion of the independent blogosphere, and is doing it's best to discover and build a niche model for internet media.
Internet media is still very young. Imagine being at the beginning of the industrial revolution, or the agricultural boom. There just isn't formula for what they're trying to do. It hasn't been done before. And the tools of the trade are being invented everyday.
We're at a point where it isn't just about innovating in an industry. It's about innovating new industries. The macro has become the micro in this age of blistering development.
You can't come into the game in a small way anymore. The shrapnels of Apple's ingenuity explosion have have landed in every corner of the new tech galaxy. You have to enter the game with an uncompromising ideal of bringing people what you want to offer them.
Gawker Media found it's voice and is magnifying it bodily. Standardizing it's platform; these days it's "intuitive simplicity". The independent consumer is drawn to platforms built to expedite their creative discovery.
