More Everything!

Most people who know me, know that I really enjoy keeping abreast of whats going on in the world of Technology news, be it watching TWiT netcasts, browsing various blogs (such as Engadget, Gizmodo, BGR, AppleInsider, CultofMac, 9to5Mac, Techcrunch, ThisIsMyNext) subscribing to ConsumerReports, etc…I love knowing what’s coming next, Apple Rumors, etc. So I was really excited when Ryan Block, the former editor-in-chief of Engadget, and Peter Rojas, the founder of both Gizmodo and Engadget, launched their new site, GDGT, in mid-2009.

I spent a some time on the site after its launch and never could really figure out what it was supposed to be. A place to brag about what you just bought? A wishlist for what you wanted to buy next? A message board? A rumor mill? It didn’t seem to do any of those things well. So I moved on. I figured I would continue to follow @GDGT and @Ryan on Twitter, as I thought they had some interesting things to say and I hoped at some point they might announce an overhaul or new objective for the site.

Over time, though, it seemed like most of what I saw on those Twitter feeds were some plugs for Ryan’s appearances on other shows, which I do appreciate, and lots of announcements of meet-ups, usually these appeared to be ads for the companies that were sponsoring the meet-up (T-mobile, ATT, HTC, etc.) I finally got tired of it and decided to unfollow both accounts. So I wrote the following:

@jwreeve: Finally unfollowed @gdgt and @ryan - I still haven’t figured out what that site is supposed to be. Seems like mostly just spam for meet-ups.

A few minutes later I received the following response:

@ryan: @jwreeve yes. gdgt has no concept, and all I want to do is spam those foolish enough to follow me. Nailed it!

First, I was taken aback, that someone with 45K followers would choose to respond to me. But, then, I had a thought: I bet this isn’t the first time Ryan has heard that before. I bet there are a lot of tech-interested people out there that really respect Ryan and Peter, but have no idea what GDGT is trying to be or accomplish. Perhaps I was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Anyway, I will continue to periodically check-out GDGT and see if it has morphed into something I might use. In the meantime, I will continue to visit the sites that do offer me content that I am excited about (I can’t wait for the ThisIsMyNext team to launch their new site).

In the end, I did respond to Ryan with the following:

@jwreeve: @ryan Didn’t mean to sound like a troll. I was a big fan of your work on @engadget. I guess I am not target demo for @gdgt. Good Luck!

No response yet…