The tech blog wars

Fortune magazine’s Michael Copeland writes about the battle — which has gotten extremely competitive — between technology news blogs Gizmodo and Engadget.

Copeland wrote, “In less than a year the upstart eclipsed Gizmodo; in September, Engadget had just under ten million unique visitors, compared with Gizmodo’s eight million. Today venture capitalists estimate each site to be worth between $30 million and $50 million. ‘He wants to win at all costs,’ says Denton of his factotum turned nemesis.

“About a year ago (after months of increasing traffic at Engadget), Denton brought in Brian Lam, a gadget reviewer from Wired magazine, to revive the flagging Gizmodo. Lam, whose hobbies include kickboxing, now squares off against Rojas’s handpicked successor, Engadget’s Ryan Block, a former software company systems administrator who can seemingly break down any piece of hardware instantaneously.

“At the debut of a new Apple product, the blows can be below the belt. In San Francisco last June, Lam lined up at 7:30 A.M. to make sure he could snag a coveted aisle seat for CEO Steve Jobs’ 9:30 A.M. appearance. At 8:30, Block arrived to a lengthening line of journalists. He walked straight to Lam, who was first in line, and shook his hand. ‘Then he just stayed,’ Lam says of Block’s cutting. (Block claims there was no formal line.) At a September iPod event, Block charged into San Francisco’s Moscone Center and inadvertently knocked a Gizmodo intern’s video equipment to the floor.”

Read more here.Â