The allure of NYT tech columnist David Pogue

Foster Kamer and Benjamin Popper of the New York Observer write Wednesday about New York Times tech columnist David Pogue and his loyal following.

Kamer and Poppper write, “He arrived at a crucial moment. Around the time of his hiring, the objects of Mr. Pogue’s affection and study — personal technology — started to transcend their roles as utilitarian aides and objects of geek affection and become fashionable accessories increasingly central to the lives of those who adopted them. When Apple released the iPod in 2001, Mr. Pogue became the go-to layman for the company’s new gadgets, and when the iPhone arrived, he filled his prose with apostlelike praise. (His Times video on the first iPhone is the second-most watched video ever uploaded by the newspaper, with nearly one and half million views.)

“Mr. Pogue’s influence metastasized along with Apple’s market share, and his 1.3 million Twitter followers now dwarfs the digital presence of other marquee Times writers such as Thomas L. Friedman and Maureen Dowd. It’s more than four times the number of followers that Jenna Wortham, the Times’s decidedly hip, young tech reporter, has; Mr. Pogue, in fact, has more followers than the entire tech reporting staff of the Times combined.

“‘He’s like the Oprah of gadget writers,’ said Michael Sebastian, the managing editor at PR Daily. ‘A single tweet from him can put you on the best-seller list.’ Earlier this week, the appropriately named Cult of Mac tweeted out: ‘@Pogue…our servers just melted melted from your sorcery.'”

Read more here.