Last summer we broke the news that Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block would team with former editor-in-chief Peter Rojas to create a new gadget startup. Today that new startup, GDGT, launches. Gadget lovers rejoice – this is a social site where you can obsess over those tiny bundles of tech joy among others just as geeky as you.
GDGT (pronounced “g-d-g-t,” but I like to just say “gadget”) is a highly structured wiki that centers on tech gadgets. Like our own Crunchbase, anyone can edit any information on the site, but everything is structured which allows for lots of slicing and dicing of the data.
The site includes intensely detailed specs on each product and groups products into logical categories. There are over a dozen categories and thousands of products in GDGT now, and users will quickly add more. All that structured data also allows for an incredibly useful Gadget finder tool as well.
Users select gadgets that they own, used to own, or want, and can add reviews and ratings. Blog reviews are threaded into the discussion as well:
GDGT also has a forum feature where users can discuss relevant gadget related topics. Here’s a thread, for example, where people fretting over the decision to buy an iPhone 3Gs can use each other as a sort of support group. Each user has a profile page with their gadgets and contributions to the community.
GDGT isn’t saying much about funding, although we’ve heard they raised around half a million dollars in an angel round led by True Ventures and Betaworks, plus a number of angel investors.
Although currently it gives a permission denied page.
great, another web site for me to waste time on? no thanks. pass.
interface feels clunky, web pages dont load = bad launch. anyone else agree?
WAAAAAA!
Congrats on the launch, although im getting “403 forbidden”
Looks good now, pretty slick UI
Not sure if I “get it” yet as I was hoping to have some commentary from Peter and Ryan. When Ryan left Engadget, I unsubscribe from the RSS feed because I only followed their site for Ryan’s badass commentary on companies like Palm, Microsoft and Motorola.
Both Peter and Ryan are excellent writers and I really hope they offer up some editorials. Furthermore, no RSS Feed? I understand why but it’s something I’d love to have.
Definitely looks good. Clean and informative. The introduction video requires a password so you might want to change the privacy setting in vimeo.
Congrats on the launch, it’s about time that something like this existed for gadgets.
The perfect site for self-absorbed and self-entitled over-consuming hipster!
Seems as though they’re entire advertising inventory is Blackberry.
Not sold on this.
The site is down?
Ya, it definitely seems to be having some troubles staying up.
i signed up with the name i wanted, but after looking around the site for a bit it seemed to crash.
i’ll look again later tonight
I thought this was a Rackspace website? Pinging the site and 95% of my packets are dropping.
Doesn’t seem to be working right now, but this will definitely be a great resource. Thanks!
im getting “403 forbidden” too
How ’bout, going forward, we save the press releases til the site’s actually up? Wouldn’t that be nice?
404
Doesn’t load for me either
Website down?
Somehow I doubt the tech press will give them grief about a crapy launch
Yeah, they didn’t implement recapcha properly, either.
Awesome, they have already taken the site offline to “upgrade” it.
They are getting killed right now. I cannot even check the site out. Not enough horsepower for the traffic.
kind of a rough launch huh?
Great site – this is what it says:
Thanks so much for stopping by!
We’re seeing a somewhat insane amount of traffic right now,
but we’re working on getting online as soon as we possibly can.
You can follow us on Twitter in the mean time.
Thanks for your patience!
Ever heard of cloud solutions?
Pathetic.
i think they’re more clever than this. the single call to action on their 404 is to follow them on twitter.
traffic from TC writeups, though valuable, die down quickly. twitter followers have more long-term value.
Clean and pretty, like me…
wow it always amaze me when these companies arent prepared for the tech crunch traffic boom
Website launch fail.
Rate / review gdgt at http://appusefu....com/app/n/gdgt. Interesting to see how many starts it gets at the end of the day.
Sounds like a great site…wish I could get to it. Launch fail indeed.
lmao, “We’re a gadget company that understand technology: Here’s some proof!”. Seriously, what? Anyone knows if you’re successful at launch you always have extra servers online, who cares if it’s overkill? It’s the difference between failing and proceeding.
Site seems to be up and running fine now. My criticism is that this might be too niche. Most people will only have one or two gadgets to put up and will probably add a few to the wish list and never bother to update the list again. A few geeks will max out the features, but again, that’s niche.
The one saving grace might be if Ryan and Peter are able to put up insightful reviews and blog posts for some unique content to keep viewers coming back. I’d give them a 50/50 chance of surviving more than 18 months.
Judging a web site by how it performs at launch is short sighted.
Sure it went through some rough times when it went live, but within a few hours, things were stable to use.
Ryan and Peter collectively have over a decade of experience in the tech journalism scene. I’m looking forward to seeing the site thrive under their management.
“incredibly useful Gadget finder tool”
Seriously? There is no search and the results from the filters show on only one line… above the filter.
Congrats to Peter and Ryan for getting this project off the ground.
The site looks great and the concept will certainly find its niche with the gadget heads out there.
I’ll definitely be checking in for product reviews/ commentary on the companies behind the devices.
Best of luck with it!
-MK
yawn.
not news…way 2 many gadget sites already
Argh, another gadget site that will have 50% of its content dominated by Apple and the IPhone. Waste of time.
Please give us a gadget site that BANS coverage of any Apple crap.
I would only be interested of I can block out all the Apple crap. But considering it’s ran by Ryan Block (Supreme Fanboi w/ leather cap), that ain’t gonna happen.
The comparison shopper is shows some terrible results.
http://gdgt.com/cowon/s9/
“Price comparison from PriceGrabber
Prices from 24 stores for $77.05 – $1299.95″
Rather than show the Cowon S9 (Digital Media Player) they bring up a mouse (Logitech G9) and a humidifier (Sunpentown SF-610).
weak
great web site
Non-stop gadget action? I don’t want to comment on what people do in the privacy of their own homes, but isn’t that illegal in 17 states?
Gadget lovers rejoice – this is a social site where you can obsess over those tiny bundles of tech joy among others just as geeky as you.