Fortune magazine provides more proof that challenge drives improvement with a story on the battle between dueling gadget blogs - Engadget and Gizmodo. Both sites are high-traffic players in the still-new realm of blog journalism. They have grown to monthly visitor levels of 10 million and 8 million, respectively, through an obsessive focus on providing breaking news about the latest electronic gear industry.
The rivalry started in 2004 when Gizmodo founding editor, Peter Rojas, left after being refused a piece of equity from its owner, blog holding company, Gawker. He founded Engadget soon after and was determined to re-create his previous success, now with an ownership stake. Rojas drove Engadget to take risks, and he scored major product scoops and an interview with Bill Gates.
Engadget overtook Gizmodo in traffic levels, which in turn forced Gizmodo to take its game up a notch. It hired Brian Lam, a prize gadget-reviewer from Wired magazine, and managed to break the news of the Playstation 3 and Wii launches on the same day.
In interviews, the sites' editors agree that competition has made both better. According to Brian Lam:
"We're like two samurai in the movies. We might respect each other's skills, but in the end we have a job to do, and one of us is going to kill the other."
And as these two blogging samurai fight it out for years to come, not only their sites and traffic will improve. In fact, I believe their battle is already elevating the entire industry. They are actually inciting a broader war within the electronics industry by publishing news, hacks, and reviews. This reporting makes consumers better armed in choosing which product to buy, and how to further enjoy what they have. This rewards the best products, punishes the worst, and pressures the manufacturers to innovate further.
However one watch-out is that this rivalry has already led to at least one major error. At the Consumer Electronics Show last week, some guys from Gizmodo thought it would be funny to walk around the convention floor with a device that universally turns off display televisions. From walking the floor myself I can tell you that this would cause extreme havoc for the men and women laying their butts and jobs on the line to show their wares, including working through the holidays to prepare for this critical event. As one comment said perfectly: "Have fun getting advertisers after this."
(Thanks to Seth Godin for the find)
UPDATE: Wired has an entire issue out in December 2009 about how failure helps companies to improve. In one article there is a quote from Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo. It's worth repeating here:
"In 2004, while vacationing in Brazil, I learned that Jason Calacanis had set up a rival blog network and hired away Pete Rojas, the editor of our gadget site, Gizmodo. There I was, a mogul at leisure, stopping by an Internet cafe only to find that one of my top editors had been secretly working o a copycat site. It was the business equivalent of a kick in the balls and a sucky way to end a vacation. Engadget soon overtook Gizmodo. But I'm grateful to Calacanis. I had been taking it easy, and he roused the competitor in me. Gizmodo now had some 10 times the traffic it had then; ait's eclipsing Engadget. I always say to myself: It's never as bad (or as good) as it seems at the time."
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