Nick Denton is putting his money where his mouth is, placing a cash bet with Rex Sorgatz that the redesign of Gawker Media sites will help grow pageviews.
Official terms of the bet with Denton: We will check Quantcast on October 1, 2011. The goal is 510M pageviews/month. It’s $10 for every million over/under. [So $600 to me if it’s 450M.] If the design reverts to the old format, he forfeits and pays out $1000. (Lockhart is the arbiter of what constitutes “design change.”) New or acquired sites do not count in the numbers. And finally, Nick’s stipulation: the money handover is to be done in public and photographed. So bring pies.
It’s an interesting bet, since the redesign of Gawker seems to focus more on creating space for big scoops, visual content and premium ads, meaning more user engagement and possibly fewer pageviews.
Former Gawker editor Gabriel Synder pointed out that pageviews seem to have fallen in the immediate aftermath of the redesign, but Denton’s not worried. “I’m going to clean him out,” he crowed.
bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper
