Gawker Trimming the Fat?

Trimming the fat? Or just not figuring out how to monetize a blog correctly? The NY Times is reporting that Gawker founder Nick Denton is putting up Sploid and Screenhead for sale, apparently because they were underperforming. Website statistics are publicly accessible for both sites. Screenhead gets around 200,000 visits monthly, and Sploid gets about the same. For both sites, their page views monthly were significantly higher. These are hardly numbers to wince at, but they are clearly not meeting the goals Denton has set for them, whatever those goals might be.

Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion gives Denton kudos, saying:

"It sounds to me like Gawker Media is practicing smart business. Nick is
like an NFL owner. He's trying to stay within the salary cap. This
means he has to trim some blogs to invest in others. That's why he will
continue to thrive. He's committed to quality and the survival of the
fittest. That's the way the media biz has operated for decades."

I can see where Steve's coming from, but the media biz is much different than it was decades ago. Nick Denton says on his own site:

"The
categories of news and humor ought to be traffic magnets. The Gawker
formula, of geeky obsessiveness, wasn't appropriate to these titles."

Actually, I would the "niches" of news and humor that Sploid and Screenhead are operating in were a formula for underperformance. There are literally thousands of other sites in their respective "niches", so it's hard to compete. In other niches, though, 200,000 visitors a month might be enough to have a relative monopoly in the space. Heck, look at Michael Arrington's TechCrunch. His numbers aren't publicly available, but based on his feed subscriber data, which is, I'd bet he's posting similar numbers... and he's not closing the doors anytime soon.

I think it's also interesting to look at the difference between Weblogs Inc. and Gawker. Weblogs Inc. was able to launch far more blogs than Gawker, and reach a critical mass that resulted in a buyout by AOL. Why is it that Gawker has moved so slow? It's at least arguable that if Denton really wanted to see what would make the cut, he'd launch more blogs and have a quicker evaluation period.

In any case, I'm sad to see Screenhead go. It was one of my daily visits. Hopefully someone will buy them out and grow them to a level that Denton could not. At they very least, someone who can show the "media biz" that things have changed, and not everyone needs to be the biggest kid on the block to succeed. Just ask Chris Anderson.

And stop looking at my website stats and laughing. I'm not doing it for the money.