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Gawker’s Pageview Bonus Plan Claims First Victim – Gizmodo CES TV Game
A week ago we wrote about the new Gawker blogger payment system which provided hefty bonuses for higher pageviews. The idea is that once you meet a certain threshold, any additional pageviews each month will lead to a bonus check. So the incentive is there to get as many pageviews as possible for each story. I said this is a poor choice of plans because it can push each post on Digg and the other news sites to drive views. Not that most of the Gawker blogs need any additional Digg-lovin’ as they already have more than any othe group.
Today we learn that gadget blog Gizmodo went to the extreme for pageviews with a stunt at CES. They turned off all of the televisions in the exhibit halls screwing up demos all over the place and what appears to be a keynote by Motorola. For many of the companies demoing at CES and spending tons of money, this could be a make or break for them. And instead of focusing on a product, they had to worry about why their electronics wasn’t working.
Is the stunt funny? Sure. Was it in poor taste? Absolutely. Of course many bloggers believe they live "above the law" – we see this in tech blogging quite a bit. "The Canadian Destroyer" Mathew Ingram thinks it’s fine and dandy. Course he also thinks stealing Lane’s photos is ok, so his opinion here is suspect. :)
Loic LeMeur agrees that it was in poor taste and reflects poorly on bloggers in general. I’ve already watched some of the leading tech bloggers do things that reflect poorly on the group as a whole.
But hey, that story already has over 115,000 pageviews so who cares, right?
Honestly, I used to do technical logistics for conferences and this video made me cringe.
Gawker is tabloid blogging at its best.
they had booth babes vs. normal babes
It was a puerile, pathetic stunt that gives Gizmodo a bad name.
Clearly, Denton sees himself as the Rupert Murdoch of the Web and is doing his best to drive the quality of his content down, just like the real Murdoch. What’s next, wet t-shirt contests?
I think the quotes made it clear he didn’t think it was actually a legal issue.
It’s more just disrespectful and irreverent and outside what a lot of people would agree is acceptable behavior. The reason bloggers take it seriously is that serious bloggers fight an uphill battle to be taken seriously and this slows that all down.
Watching the video is embarrassing. Those people spent an absolute ton of money to make their businesses better, and these Gizmodo guys are like the ultra-unhilarious morning FM DJs everywhere.
Are you saying TV-B-Gone’s are illegal is Las Vegas? That’s a sign I’ve never seen and a pretty bold claim by you, Allen.
I thought the Gizmodo stunt was hilarious, and I bet plenty of people at CES thought so too when they found out about it. I think people need to lighten up.
as i noted on twitter, mathew, i certainly hope no one interrupts your next presentation. It’d be a real shame.
People interrupt my presentations all the time — it’s irritating, but it’s not really that big a deal.
I normally like Gizmodo and have friends there, but if this was just about increasing their pageviews in this stupid way– at the expense of people who’d worked really hard to be there, that’s just uncool. Kinda makes me lose respect for them. And definitely not sending that link around.
I saw Rafe’s Tweet that Gizmodo should be denied press credentials next year. Thoughts?
I would have found it funny if these people had paid alot of money to be there. Also to do it during a keynote is completely unprofessionel. The problem is with the amount of traffic they get can Motorola afford to boycott them.
It would have been funny if Johnny Knoxville did it. This makes Gizmodo look really bad.
That’s all.