blogs

Who's done the best job covering Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo? Having scrutinized coverage from more than a dozen outlets, we'd have to say that as of Sunday night, the hands-down winner was Silicon Alley Insider.

Three crazy years

A long-time blogger, Peter recalls starting Engadget when the idea that "any web site could be profitable, was a crazy idea in the wake of the dot-com bust." The rest is history and Engadget is now a lean-and-mean operation at the top of the blog heap. "It's a pretty decent business," he says. "It's not MySpace or YouTube… we do all right, cover expenses and can pay writers more and more." Staffers include, Peter, Ryan Block and four other full-timers, supported by a team of freelance contributors.

The Wall Street Journal--New York Times rivalry has spilled into the consumer tech blogosphere, but their real enemy is not one another. It's specialists such as Engadget and Gizmodo, who in covering CES and Macworld showed more imagination, posted more items and inspired more reader feedback than the hallowed New York dailies.

(a free service of Techdirt Corporate Intelligence)

July 2006

Techdirt has been around since before the word "blog" existed. Now it is home for 12 -- a mixture of writers, tech folks, sales and marketing

Private research

The core of Techdirt's business today is private research - customized, detailed corporate intelligence reports. Mike explains it this way: "insightful, opinionated posts on competitive areas including the tech market, and legal trends, up-to-date in a quick, insightful manner that lets them do their job and be more intelligent about what they do every day." They have three dozen clients, most Fortune 500. Among those willing to go on the record are Volkswagen and Verisign.