Editors and outsiders alike can choose to "follow" each other's
pages. And the editors of Gawker Media sites are now expected to
pay attention to this reader ecosystem as it grows, linking out to
Kinja posts from Deadspin.com or Jalopnik.com's home page as they
see fit.
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The gist of Mr. Goldberg's post, it seems, is that Gawker is
admitting that it can't grow without opening up its platform to
outside contributors. And that Kinja is a way to boost traffic to
help sell more ads. I ask Mr. Denton about the article over GChat.
"I didn't read it," he said. You didn't read it? "I don't think
I've ever knowingly read a full Pando post." (There's
history here.) But he clearly knew
about the post (though he said he didn't know that the writer was a
Bleacher Report co-founder), because he pointed to this
Kinja post about the Pando article.
And then he, unsurprisingly, dismissed the notion that Gawker is
modeling itself after either Bleacher Report and Huffington Post.
"The original idea of blog publishing was that writer and reader
would be on the same level. That it would be a conversation -- not
a lecture. People lost sight of that. We didn't," he said. "Kinja
is designed to break down the walls of the ghettos. So that
everybody -- editor, writer, source, subject, expert, fan -- can be
a contributor." But Gawker will obviously monetize the community
blogs, right? I mean, this is a business after all, yes? This line
of questioning annoys Mr. Denton, or at least he says that it does.
Directly making money from commenter Kinja pages is "an
afterthought," he said. "I find the topic irritating. It's
premature." The business model, Mr. Denton claimed, is something
different. "The richer the ecosystem, the smoother the interaction
between writer and reader, the more compelling our sites will be,"
he said. Yet the Kinja Terms of Use spell out what may and may not
be coming:
- "We will insert ads in and around the Kinja platform and
content experience where it makes sense, however, we will not place
any ads on your blog"
- "We will insert affiliate links into your content where it
makes sense, however, if you insert your own affiliate codes then
we won't remove them"
- "Your content may be used in ads with full credit and link back
to you"
And Mr. Denton's vision is not free of contradictions. He speaks of
a historical "caste system" in digital media with different parties
"cordoned off in zones on the page, unable to talk to each other in
an intelligent fashion." Yet, in the new system, the historical
highest class -- the journalists -- still play a major role in
deciding which comments are displayed most prominently. Still, he
said he's convinced the changes are "working." Jalopnik has linked
to as many as six contributor posts a day, he said. Commenters, he
claims, are gathering around the most interesting threads in
comments sections now that only a few comments are display
initially. The changes will roll out to all of the Gawker Media
properties by May. "I've seen something like this only twice in the
last ten years: around the launch of Gawker and that of Defamer
[which eventually folded into Gawker.com]," he said. "It's
relatively rare that you can tell this soon that something is going
to work." So that's it? It worked! Kinja is a success! Not exactly.
A Deadspin update about Reggie Bush signing with the Detroit Lions
meant to spark a Kinja discussion fell flat. "No dicussion here?"
the writer asked. Further, measuring the changes of these moves
won't be easy. How much more compelling is the comments section
today vs. yesterday? That's pretty subjective. Do Gawker Media
sites end up hiring some Kinja writers? That could be a less
subjective signal. But, in the end, measuring whether the expansion
of Kinja does indeed build an "ecosystem" and make Gawker Media's
properties more "compelling" will likely come down, either directly
or indirectly, to the two metrics it always does in digital media:
traffic and revenue.
