Gawker Monopolizes Media By Letting Its Commenters Do The Work

The new system allows Denton to reward the most outspoken and faithful strata of followers — who are known to take to their Twitters, Tumblrs and personal blogs to proliferate the Gawker conversation — by giving them a place on the site to share their own links, news and video, in addition to the comments section where they air their aggravations and praises. But his CEO mind is right: though he sells it as anarchy, it is carefully constructed, regulated to side pages and moderated in such a way that rewards the continuation of Denton dogma. The site is taking a bordering community that exists on social networking sites and blogging platforms and attempts to move their traffic to Gawker Media pages rather than external ones.

In all, it’s similar to the flourishing body politic on sites like Digg and Reddit, in which stories are culled from myriad sources (be they online, at work or in the neighborhood) and parsed by desk chair critics. With this move, Gawker has acknowledged that anyone can built a site like Digg or Reddit; the hard part is getting readers willing to converse. Denton knows he has this — he’s grateful and he’s acting on it. Denton referenced Digg’s “all” page in a chat with Mediaite this morning, but warned “You won’t really be able to see much ’til next week.”

The longview, then, is that any web property with a constant audience can bolt on a more inclusive social aspect, in the form of an advanced discussion board, with minimal effort and maximum return. Who’s next? You can be sure AOL — whose increased editorial presence online has been well-documented — is taking notice. Any site with huge traffic would be wise to harness the conversation in a place where they can reap the benefits, namely web traffic, firsthand.

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