By David Ponce

Hey everyone. I did this about a year ago, and I’m about to do it again. I want to ask you all a couple questions, to make sure we’re finding the best, most interesting content for all of you.

How many of you come here first for gadget news?
How many come here as a “once I’ve read all the other ones”?
Who would be interested with a slightly larger proportion of items already covered elsewhere, with the tradeoff being more relevance and more purchasability (this is not a word, eh?)?
Do you come here for the offbeat, or the mainstream?

These are my most basic questions, but the comment section is open to your suggestions. Every day we scour hundreds of sites, looking for products we think might interest you, and we can’t do the best job without your input. So, please, help us out; we want to give you more of what you like, and less of what you don’t, so we need to know about both.

Thanks folks.

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46 COMMENTS

  1. I feel like there’s nothing unique here, so I hit all the other sites first, then come here to see if I missed any frindge sites. There’re never any scoops or exclusive content, so I feel like all you do is come home from work and load up all the gadget sites in tabs and copy the best stories.

  4. How many of you come here first for gadget news?
    Me! – i get the RSS feed into outlook. its great!

    Who would be interested with a slightly larger proportion of items already covered elsewhere, with the tradeoff being more relevance and more purchasability (this is not a word, eh?)?

    sure i would!
    Do you come here for the offbeat, or the mainstream?
    Off beat!

  5. this is the first site i come to for gadgetnews.
    its not the fastest site but it looks the best and for what i know its got the gadgets i cant find anywhere else (later on maybe)

  6. I always come here first because I enjoy the layout and style of writing used here. Unfortunatly you don’t seem to post articles before any other site does for the same product. I think if you start posting things before anyone else does, you’d definately be top of the pack! Oh and the off-beat crazy gadgets are my favourite.

  7. I come here first for gadget news and I use the RSS feed in Safari. very handy. I also look at Electronista and The Cool Hunter. Keeping up the aspect of finding the more esoteric and unusual stuff would be better, I think. I hate reading about something and then seeing it elsewhere. One of the main reasons I like Oh Gizmo is the writing style – Easy to read and frequently amusing. It also covers non US stuff well, which is rarely the case elsewhere.

  8. the layout is crap – you mentioned ages ago that you were going to have a redesign, what happened? All talk but no action, if you’re going to mention something that you’re going to do, then deliver.

    I agree with the first comment. Anyone can launch a website and flick through all the other sites to get info – there’s nothing new here that I cant find anywhere else, hence why I dont come here first

  9. I read your articles through RSS. I wish there were some way to suppress the lame me-too echoes in Gizmodo, but since they don’t have the basic courtesy to credit you, I can’t filter them out automatically in my aggregator.

  10. How many of you come here first for gadget news?
    – Me here
    How many come here as a ?once I?ve read all the other ones??
    – First this one then the other ones
    Who would be interested with a slightly larger proportion of items already covered elsewhere, with the tradeoff being more relevance and more purchasability (this is not a word, eh?)?
    – Sure, would love to see more news
    Do you come here for the offbeat, or the mainstream?
    – both

  11. OhGizmo! rocks, I’ve noticed that Gizmodo has been taking stories from OhGizmo! lately and crediting other sites that aren’t direct competition, which I find to be quite sleazy.

    Gizmodo used to be good when Joel Johnson/John Biggs were still the Executive Editors, but now they just plain suck.

  12. How many of you come here first for gadget news?
    How many come here as a ?once I?ve read all the other ones??
    Who would be interested with a slightly larger proportion of items already covered elsewhere, with the tradeoff being more relevance and more purchasability (this is not a word, eh?)?
    Do you come here for the offbeat, or the mainstream?

    Generally come here after reading through Engadget for all the normal gadget stuff, come here to find the interesting and weird ones, and the amusing stories that go with them. (Still wanna buy one of those USB rocket launchers) Reckon its a great site, maybe a few more updates if thats possible.

  13. I come here first for all my gadget info, i love the writing style it makes covers all the important points and it is funny and interesting. I like the offbeat stories more than the real products that someone can buy, but they are both good. I read this site first, and sometimes i read other sites but not often.

  14. I enjoy reading OhGizmo. As a fellow gadget blogger I also check 100s of sites on a daily basis and I’d certainly put OG right up there with the top gadget blogs.

    More original stories would be good but I know how difficult that is. Design wise I like it, simple and easily recognisable.

  16. I always check you first. While engadget and gizmodo seem to have more content at times, your writing style makes me laugh often. You don’t have the “corporate” feel that those sites do, which I like. I don’t work in a cubicle, but those sites make me feel like I’m in one. I still read them, but I tell people about your site. Keep up the great work.

  17. I would lie if I told that I only came here, I also recieve RSS from Akihabaranews but besides that I don’t care about other related sites mostly because they have too much fanboys…I don’t give a S*** if X is better than Y bla bla bla or if Z can kick the ass of W…I just want news with humor and fast to read because after work I’m too tired for all the technical lalala 🙂 Plus I also love the writing style. keep the good work and if its possible change a bit the design its not crap but it feels old.

  18. I probably don’t come here first everytime but quite often. I like the posts and that there not just focused on the new blackberry etc. Love the starnge stuff you have here. Maybe I would like some more japanese stuff and how to order them.

  20. My morning ritual:
    Gizmodo first
    Engadget second
    OhGizmo third

    I also only visit OhGizmo once per day (and never on the weekends). I visit Gizmodo and Engadget 3-5 additional times everyday (and at least once on the weekends).

  21. i come here first! i love you guys 😉 All the posts are really funny and its updated very often. i do go to other sites for gadget news but alway here first.

  22. I come here first. Usually witty writing, and cool stuff. I’m not so into gadgets that I need to be certain that I find it first. As soon as you pick it up is good enough for me.

    I’d like to see more posts, even if some of the items are more mundane or covered elsewhere.

    I come here for both mainstream and offbeat, but I enjoy the offbeat more.

  23. I used to come here first all the time. I have subsequently found other sites that have more content and who update with a much greater frequency then you do. Sites like engadget, or gizmodo. Your site is usually the last one I visit. It has the least amount of content and is sadly lacking compared to the other sites I mentioned. You boys need to make a hard push to catch up to sites who are quite frankly whupping your asses up and down the information super highway!!!!

  25. This is great guys. You have no idea how much all this stuff is useful. A lot of positive, but also a good amount of criticism, and it’s not falling on deaf ears.

    @ Harsh Critic: I hear ya, man. Gizmodo and Engadget are kicking our butt all over the place. Always have, hopefully won’t always. We’re working on ways of bringing you more content, one of which is increasing revenue so we can afford to pay writers. We’re trying to do that without increasing the number of ads, but rather the quality (hence our Federated Media partnership). You’d be amazed at the magical productivity increase you see when money enters the picture. 🙂

    @ James and Rafael Silva: About the layout/design… I know, I know. I haven’t said anything because, quite frnakly, I’ve said this too often… but this time it’s for real. We’re about a week, ten days away from a re-launch. We’re debugging the new theme as we speak, and you should have a shiny new design really soon. Again, money is key, and unlike all the previous redesign claims, this time, some was spent.

    To everyone else, again, thanks for the input. It’s so incredibly useful. Please, keep it coming!

  26. Splitting hairs.

    Gizmodo, Engadget and OhGizmo are all in my RSS reader. It updates every hour, and since the other two generally post _something_ once an hour, and OhGizmo is much slower, that generally means I don’t visit OhGizmo…

    However, since Engadget and Gizmodo are often direct rips of each other, and OhGizmo usually has unique content, that doesn’t put you in the #3 position.

  30. How many of you come here first for gadget news?

    I come here first.

    Who would be interested with a slightly larger proportion of items already covered elsewhere, with the tradeoff being more relevance and more purchasability (this is not a word, eh?)?

    I just want to see cool shit. I’ll go shopping somewhere else. 🙂

    Do you come here for the offbeat, or the mainstream?

    Offbeat or cutting edge.

  31. I only visit OhGizmo! during my lunch hour internet news ritual. OhGizmo! has a great feel to it, much more ‘homegrown’ than the other two unmentionables, and I like that. It’s funny, and quirky. The offbeat stuff definitely does it for me 🙂

  32. I personally come here first, before other blogs – I’m here more for the offbeat stuff than the mainstream – bicycle powered washing machines, for example. Not to say the odd mainstream thing is wrong or anything.

  33. I Come here first, but site speed is Jurassic.
    How do you weed out “soon to be extinct inventions
    while staying unique? There is a balance between
    marketability (mainstream) an being original.
    Find that speedy middle ground and you’ll make
    me horny for more gadgets.

  35. I read most of the big gadget mags, including this one, by RSS, because I like to get the whole spread. I like the more weird things you run, plus your focus on environmental angles from time to time. Plus your articles are more in depth and a lot less fanboyish. Leave the Apple swee and new-laptop hand-waving to the guys who are best at it, and keep with the fringe ideas. Everyone needs a unique selling point, and that’s yours, IMHO.

    Peace…

  36. I try to check in once a day. Usually here first, then New Scientist. OhGizmo stuff is definitely the more interesting of the two.
    I pass on cool/funny/relevent stuff to friends.

  37. I come here first because i like the filter you guys have here. you have only the best stories that are interesting and don’t include all that technocrap like engadget. Keep up the good work and please don’t change anything!

  38. I usually come here first, and out of all the gadget sites I visit, yours is the one I like the most.

    To break it down, a site is nothing without content. However, all the sites have content, but you know how to deliver it properly.

    And I’m not just talking about the way you express yourself, your witty writing and all that, thats great. But your site is very well laid out aswell.

    When I read that you’re releasing a new design of your site in the near future I got a chill down my spine heh, cause this is a good layout. I dont come to a gadget site to look at the pretty design, I come for the content and the style of the site in general.

    The layout of your site is great. The text collumn isn’t too narrow which is often a problem on blog/news sites. There are no ads or other disturbing elements between articles which makes the site easy to read and navigate.
    To me this is paramount. Nice design without functionality on a site like this is a catastrophy, please please PLEASE keep this in mind for the new site. I can not stress this enough.

    Keep up the good work!! 🙂

  39. Hi Cel. Don’t worry. To us, ads are a necessary evil, and we try to separate them from content as much as possible. In the new site,the article column is wider, not narrower. And site navigation is moved to the bottom, in a nice footer all by itself, and not interspersed with ads, as it is now. There will be no ads between articles. We could have done that a long time ago, but always believed it took away from the user experience. The site is too crowded with ads as it is…

    But you’ll see. We’ve taken the things we believe work best about this layout, and kept them. And, hopefully, polished everything up a bit. 🙂

  41. I come for gadget news, but also hoping something unusual has been posted like that fountain that glowed and it looked like it was flowing backwards. that was awesome

  42. OhGizmo is in my main blog/article clicking serie (it earned a IE shotcut-button) . Im not into RSS: i like site-viewing experience and faster click-trough-ability.

    I like the offbeat/weird stuff most, but dont mind where it comes from (source or repost), and purchasability is irrelevant for me (dont have lots of $$ to spend on gadgets), so more expirimental/cutting edge would be great.

    Reposts arent bad imho: nobody can browse every site (if lazy :), so seeing some item repsoted here or there is a small price to pay to for the insurance to see more (overall). I recon you could post more from the smaller, more specific sites (if its in the OhGizmo topic-range oc).

    Your style of writing is very good, so thats probably what attracts me most anyway.

    One feature i’d like to see: video’s directly on front-page, by using some javascript or something to hide/write it (meh lazy 🙂

  43. I come here first. I would prefer ALL relevent new tech. As a senior technology leader in the entertainment industry, I look here mainly to make sure I don’t miss something that may help us be first to market by utilizing something in a different way. Thanks for keeping it going.

  45. I actually prefer this blog because it *doesn’t* update once an hour. I like the number of posts I see now. It’s basically boiled down to just the really interesting stuff without 19 extra posts I feel obligated to read even though I don’t really care about them.

  46. I come here first!
    I definitely prefer off-beat stuff. And I like odd/interesting that can actually be bought.

    Personally I’m less interested in reading about the ‘standard’ gadgets (e.g. cellphones, PDAs, etc.) since they all have other blogs devoted to those items/topics already.

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