If you love your gadgets and love talking with people who love gadgets, you’ve probably already heard about gdgt.com, a technology site that lets you “engage with your devices and hang out with people who are as passionate about their gear as you are,” according to the gdgt.com About page. Investors are loving gdgt.com as well, according to this story by Jessica E. Vascellaro in the Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog. The site, launched just last year, raised $550,000 in initial seed funding and another $3.165 million last month. The interesting thing about gdgt.com is that they don’t hire writers, according to Vascellaro’s story. Instead, it consists of user reviews and other community generated content.
One of the founders, Peter Rojas “says that in the same way blogging democratized content creation compared to newspapers, gdgt is trying to democratize blogging. ‘We have come to terms with the fact that no matter how much expertise you have, there is someone out there smarter than you are,’ says Mr. Rojas, adding that the best people to answer questions and comment on products are the people who own the gadgets. Gdgt is one of a lengthening list of businesses built on the belief that real people can deliver better content than editors or generalist reporters.”
Related articles by Zemanta:
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2090edcd-cff8-4eae-9e98-ac75109a734c)
Hey, thanks for the post!
To be clear, we don’t have editors for the same reason that Yelp and Facebook don’t have editors. Ultimately gdgt is a platform for gadget enthusiasts to discuss, share, and discover gadgets, it’s about enabling the users to connect with each other and share their thoughts and expertise.
I see the similarities to Yelp and Facebook. Still, when it comes to a content creation model, gdgt.com is more focused than Facebook and more effective than Yelp. The interface of community and technology on gdgt.com is clearly producing trusted and reputable content, still an all-too-rare commodity on many sites. This is not yet entirely the case with Yelp (See: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2010/04/06/yelp-makes-changes-reacts-to-complaints-from-businesses.aspx) . Adding to its appeal, it seems like the gdgt.com model is scalable in that the same technology/community interface could be applied to other topics people are passionate about. I, for one, would love to see one about tea! And, it looks like the content stream can be monetized in a way that doesn’t compromise the trusted content. I’ll be interested to see how gdgt.com’s new discussion system enhances the community. I like how you guys discussed it with the community before implementing. Good luck with whatever comes next.