Gizmodo Archive

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?