Breaking: Gawker to Open Publishing Platform to Users

Two nights ago, at the New York Tech Meetup, the most interesting news to fall on my ears came from the Gawker crew. It seems that coming this Friday, they will slowly start to release some new publishing tools - apparently riding on the back of the tools they use internally to keep Gawker Media afloat.

What’s interesting is that they are, in essence, fixing the problem with comments which I have complained about for quite some time. There is an unnatural competition between the readers and the site author. The author aims to create content that induces the readers to comment more and more frequently while maintaining some semblance of top-heaviness. The commentators, of course, are often trying to either support or tear down the post itself, often making a good case, regardless of the direction - producing a bottom-heavy situation. Depending on your interests, one situation is likely better than another.

Under the new system, a Gawker reader won’t have to compete in-page with the authors. Instead, they can, principally, respond with their own content at their own user page. A wonderful twist to this would be, of course, if they eliminated the notion of comments in general and instead used trackback as a unifying comment protocol. Put another way, there’s no need to “comment” when you can “publish” at your own venue. This is usually impractical since it imposes the requirement that all users be bloggers of some sort. In Gawker’s case, since they are providing every user with a page, they lower the bar virtually to the ground.

An even better win, for both parties seemingly, is that user content will not be relegated to the lower flap but instead can be promoted aside the more traditionally crafted pieces. This will allow a number of different personalities to form out of the already active community.

Good job Denton.

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