Peter Rojas has been a blog pioneer from the outset and is most well known for his blog Engadget – a frantic news alert of the latest gadgetery available all done with a decent mix of humor and irreverence. IF sat down with Peter to get some insight into the success of his work.
Engadget is one of the most popular websites in the world. How did you get here?
I started blogging back in 2001. I was living in New York City as a broke writer: I was spending too much time blogging and not enough time concentrating on pitching ideas to magazines. One day, Nick Denton and I were hanging out and we were chatting about blogging and he asked me why I didn’t blog much any more. I told him about my dilemma and he said, ‘Why not blog and get paid for it?’ We spent some time trying to work out a niche site that could potentially break even and then realized: gadgets.
Everyone loves gadgets and more importantly it was something I was interested in. You can’t do a professional blog about a topic you don’t have any interest in. You occasionally see these networks of professional blogs, set up just to get Google adsense dollars. It doesn’t work – the content is usually poor because you can see the lack of passion for the topic.
Also remember that by being actively involved in the content over time means we can connect the dots and refer to other stories or even see the bigger picture.
The first gadget site you launched was Gizmodo. How did you set the tone of the site?
To be honest, we were inspired by WiFi Network news. It’s a very professional site; still is. A lot of the other gadget sites were written by tech journalist fascinated by the technical side of electronics. We realized that we didn’t need to be able to hack a Linux box to write this stuff (even though I now do know).
Our voice was different. We approached technology differently. We learned a lot from Wired, Mono2000 and RUSirius. We were irreverent and our tone evolved over time. You know, it’s still evolving now with Engadget.
Some folk don’t realize that blogs now employ staff. You have 4 writers – how do you pick your team?
I personally publish 5200 posts a year but I have my team (Ryan, Barb, Marc) who work shifts. We also have regular contributors for columns and features. To be in the team, you have to get ‘it’. It’s intangible. You need a certain depth and breadth of tech without necessarily being a specialist. We don’t want a Mac person to come in and refuse to look at PCs. We try to be agnostic – we’re enthusiastic about how people can use this stuff and about technology in general, we try not to get focused on specific brands.
A writer for Engadget or any blog needs to be able to get their point across in 2 paragraphs – with a little flair and attitude. Another inspiration for us is the Daily Show and what we learned from that is: don’t underestimate the intelligence of the audience. Consider this when you look at Maxim magazine. The writers at Maxim approach their readers like they’re idiots and it’s all about setting up the gag in 50 to 75 words. Humor should be of service to the piece not the reason.
So how do you determine what goes in? Do you have editorial themes you choose?
We’re totally news based. If there’s a big conference on smart phones, you’re going to find us writing about smart phones that week. It’s when all the new products come out and the product news. We’re subjective and write about what’s interesting to us.
We want to be providing news about gadgets in real time, 24 hours a day. People want information immediately, there’s a raised expectation. We aim to publish at least one story every 20 minutes between 8am and 4pm. It keeps things interesting.
We look at what CNN did. How they broke the news model and created a respected place to get up to the minute news 24 hours a day anywhere in the world. That’s what I’d like Engadget to do.
So what happens to magazines like Wired and T3?
They won’t disappear, there will always be stories that don’t work well on the web. They’ll just have to drop the news because they won’t be able to cover it in real-time like we are.
There’s a lot of hype around being the first to break the news.
Absolutely, and it’s very important to us. We had the first live photos of the new Xbox 360 console. They had a special TV event with lots of celebs that they recorded a couple of days before. No cameras were allowed, and cameraphones were checked in. Anyway, someone got a snap. They set up a MySpace account and dropped us a URL. It was our biggest ever story. We hate watermarking pics, but Damn, sometimes I wish I had put our logo on those photos now.
Why would someone tip you off?
I think we’ve built a connection with our readers. We love to hear from them. Many times a tip off is from someone in a company that’s proud of what they’re doing and wants to let the world know. It’s not often someone leaks something bad about their company. It does happen, but it’s rare.
A recent article in the British press (the Observer) suggested that there is no longer such a thing as a geek because we all are in fact geek todays, do you agree?
Well, the in the past few years number of personal gadgets owned by the average person has gone from 0 or 1 to 4 or 5. People are integrating gadgets into their lives in a way they wouldn’t have thought of five years ago. There’s an economical, technical and social shift. I don’t know about not being a geek but I know we’re not losers and our audience doesn’t think that either.
So what makes you want to do this? What makes someone so dedicated to blogging about technology?
When I was younger my passion was for critical theory. It’s something that I studied at college and even wrote my dissertation on Guy Debord and the Situationist International, Debord wrote a book called The Society of the Spectacle. They were a Sixties group that wanted to create radical political change through subversive and agitational art. It’s a lot more complex than that, but needless to say, it was perfect for a disaffected, cerebral twenty-year-old. One thing I’ve realized over the past few years, especially with the internet, is that tech is effecting social change in a way politics hasn’t been able to lately. Take one example: Guy Debord and the Situationists were strongly against intellectual property and created art that challenged existing notions of intellectual property, and since then there have been plenty of theorists and activists trying to change put forward new ideas of intellectual property, but they weren’t accomplishing much — then Napster came along and made instant change that no political or corporate effort could do. Napster put intellectual property at the center of an international debate and almost overnight changed people’s opinion on and use of intellectual property forever.
To be honest, I always thought I was going to be an academic and end up writing and art and politics or something like that, but there’s something really tangible and real about writing about all this technology that has the potential to change people’s lives in there and now. Technology short-circuits; it changes to our social fabric. What’s exciting about technology is that it’s going to change the world in ways that we don’t even know.
So where next for Engadget? Where does it grow too?
We’re trying to grow into three or four areas. We’ve been doing reader events, we’re going to expand into video, and we’d like the podcast to grow and evolve into something better than it is now.
We held a reader event recently. 200 people turned up! It was great. I love speaking at these events and getting everyone’s reaction. It’s not really about the number who turn up.. When I was in Reykjavik recently 15 people turned up. 15 in Iceland! We just went there for a visit and a radio station there found out I was in town and invited me to talk about the event on their show!
Do you ever plan selling the products you write about?
I think we have to be careful of conflicts of interest. We want to be seen as a reputable source of news. Selling products poses challenges to that strategy because suddenly you’re writing about products that compete with products you’re trying to sell. Usually best to steer clear of all that.
Thank you
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