My name is James. James Del actually. I work at a place called Gawker Media, something I find myself explaining to my parents every time I see them. They'll get it one day. I don't believe in Twitter, but I do believe in Facebook and LinkedIn. There's a Myspace page out there too, but never mind that. Questions, concerns, and comments can be directed to James, At-Sign Gawker, Period Com.
Gawker Commenter-Generated Posts
Can anyone—JDel and Blakeley, I’m looking in your direction—explain what was up with all the commenter-generated posts on Gawker last Thursday and Friday (and maybe still happening right now?)? I stop paying attention for a few days and all kinds of fun things happen.
My favorite of the few I managed to stumble across tonight is Hez’s bikini test, which is filled with all kinds of chesty goodness.
VirusWithShoes’ confessional wins my honorable mention.
To quote another Gawker behind-the-scener, “In typical Gawker fashion, we launched a new feature with zero explanation.” There’s a box in your commenter profile. The point of the box, as I understand, is to submit your own stories, tips, and links for editor perusal, similar to the Tip Tool. These posts were supposed to be hidden to other users, but someone (either Moff or VirusWithShoes I think) realized that if you comment on your own post, it’ll start showing up in other people’s activity feed (Hez just commented on Bikini Test). From there, other people can go in and start commenting too. The tool, which was supposed to be a cool way to generate user submitted content, has seemingly spiraled into mildly retarded commenter banter, many without topic or point. I’m just speaking for myself here, but I think this is proof of two things:
1) Gawker commenters have gotten increasingly lame and self-flagellating.
2) We are still a very long way off from having a complete citizen journalism system that works.
