The Reality That K Street PR/Comm Firms (and everyone else) Is Quickly Waking-Up To

Wired Magazine has a good read on the competition between the two tech blog giants Gizmodo and Engadget, which explains a lot about the way that blogging ($0 cost of publishing) is turning (has turned) the business world upside down.

Some key graphs:

Engadget and Gizmodo are two of the most popular blogs in the world, pulling in an average 4.1 million and 3.4 million unique visitors a month, respectively, according to comScore. The sites routinely break news: Engadget scored the first photos of the Xbox 360, while Gizmodo gave its readers the first shots of Microsoft's second-generation Zune. And in less than six years, they have become two of the most authoritative voices in the gadget world. A Google search for "iPhone review" returns a three-part series by Engadget as the top result, two links ahead of CNET and eight ahead of The New York Times...

Last August, Engadget ran an open letter to Palm trashing the troubled company ("Frankly, you've taken a turn from being the respected underdog and innovator to repeat offender in stale gear") and suggesting steps for a turnaround; CEO Ed Colligan posted a response on the Palm blog, thanking Engadget for the advice and announcing that he would forward the ideas to his entire executive staff. Lam says that Steve Jobs once told him that he checks Gizmodo daily, and Bill Gates is on record as an Engadget fan...

As a Samsung spokesperson puts it: "Gadget blogs are the future of the world for us."

In the new media business universe you gotta kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have already started puckering up. Like yesterday.