I Asked Joel Johnson For A Guest Post And Here It Is

By David Ponce… and Joel Johnson

[ It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Joel Johnson was the inspiration and the seed of life behind OhGizmo! This site would not exist were it not for his influence on me, simple as that. He was the sole, slightly masochist editor of Gizmodo back in 2004. He has enjoyed a stellar writing career at places like BoingBoing Gadgets (where he currently works), Playboy (I think I read that somewhere) and countless others. After meeting him at CES this year, I figured I’d try my luck and ask him to guest post here, on OG. Worse that could happens was… nothing. Below is what came out. -Ed. ]

I’ve known David Ponce since he started OhGizmo!, but I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him and the rest of the team until this year’s CES. They’re good eggs.

David asked me if I’d have time to write a column here at OhG!, which would be great…but I don’t. (I sort of run my own gadget site, which shall remain linkless.) But I started thinking about the sort of thing I would write about on OhGizmo! that I wouldn’t write on my own site, and it didn’t take long before I knew exactly what to say.

So here goes.

I really like OhGizmo!. Always have. I’ve seen dozens of gadget sites come and go. Very few have both the tenacity to do the work of proper curation and dedicate themselves to trying to write good, interesting summaries every single day. But the OhGizmo! team puts in the effort every single day and remains one of the few gadget sites that I go to every single day. In fact, it’s difficult for me to not link them more than once or twice a day, but then people might find out that all I really do is let other people find the good stuff and then reblog it with a candy shell of obnoxiousness.

It’s hard to run a little business like OhGizmo! right now. Something about the economy or something—I’m no money science mechanic, but I think maybe we need to check the country’s oil or something? I don’t know. But the point is: It’s not any easier for the little companies like OhGizmo! than it is the great big media organizations that are crashing into each other like old trees in the rain forest.

Well, actually, it sort of is. Because while media big and small are struggling, boutique sites like OhGizmo! rely more directly on the interaction and patronage of real fans, people who make a connection with the writers and come back every day to see what’s been uncovered today. And that means you readers can make a real difference to David and the rest of the team by telling your friends and coworkers about OhGizmo!. Send them a link to an OhG! story. Change their homepage to OhGizmo! and then blame it on a virus. (Don’t do this.) Hell, just send David and Evan and the Liszewski clan a note saying you appreciate their work.

We little sites live and breathe on traffic, which is a gauche way of saying “We need people to enjoy our work.” So if you like OhGizmo! as much as I do, don’t be shy about spreading it around.