Ryan Block is the former editor (and current editor-at-large) of Engadget. He reminds me of Justin Long from the “I’m a Mac” ads, only he takes himself seriously. Peter Rojas is the founder of Gizmodo, as well as a host of other blogs. Although the sites were perceived rivals, their two generals got together for a content startup called gdgt.
Gdgt is currently nothing more than a weekly Podcast but the concept is great. Get 2 young guys who know everything there is to know in the space, and have them form like Voltron. The project will be supported by Josh Topolsky, editor of Engadget, and Brian Lam, editorial director of Gizmodo.
Although Ryan claims that he and Brian Lam are friends, Ryan made some fairly limp attempts at shutting him down. Ryan once started a “Boycott Gizmodo” blog. If it’s true that they were as friendly as they say, then their relationship was reminiscent of the 3rd grade when you “hated Craig’s guts.”
“The time has come to Boycott Gizmodo,” reads the post. “Not only did Brian Lam and Gizmodo purposefully deceive long standing readers such as myself about the iPhone, they did a terrible job of covering their tracks.” (Lam’s post promised readers news about an “iPhone” device on a Friday, before the launch of the actual device — and then, on a Monday, revealed that Cisco owned a trademark on the term, long attached to speculation about an Apple cell phone, and had released an iPhone-branded product. The companies long since settled the matter, giving Apple rights to the iPhone name)
Ryan made sure to shed a blog tear after the episode and titled his post “Bygones and Rivalries.” My favorite part is when he blames the boycott on an employee. “I let myself get talked into [the boycott blog] by a particularly hateful former writer.” It’s a beautiful lie because it puts the blame on someone else and insinuates he fired the “hateful” asshole soon after. I think the firing went something like this:
Ryan: James. You fucked up. You made me do a bad thing.
James: What are you talking about? You agreed to it.
Ryan: I know but then people got mad.
J: So stand up for yourself. They totally did lie about the iPhone.
R: Look, I’m firing you because you stole from the company.
J: This is your way of getting around a lawsuit right?
R: Get out of here you hateful thief!
So if that was Ryan Block’s relationship with Lam, how did things go with Josh Topolsky? Nobody knows. Nobody has ever heard anything about Josh Topolsky, but he was probably a post monkey for Engadget. It’s easy to get ahead in blogging, just make sure you can post 40 articles a day and get your boss a no-water-no-foam-non-fat-Tazo-chai-latte on top.
If you’ve been following gdgt, you know it’s just Ryan and Peter talking about the news and throwing in their 2 pennies. Remind you of anything? I would be surprised if there is anyone out there who has followed QuicklyBored since the beginning, but we had something very similar going on here. The QuicklyBored Podcast started out as Doug and I talking about the same stuff in an incredibly similar format. The problem was that we weren’t internet celebrities and founders of the biggest sites on Earth. There is still a shocking resemblance, no?
So if you’re looking for something to sleep to, you can follow gdgt on Twitter, although it’s a link bot, or visit the site here.
You can also follow Peter here (blog, Twitter), Ryan here (blog, Twitter), and any gdgt updates here.
Also, whatever you do, don’t follow me on Twitter. Please.
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