Gadget site Gdgt has raised $3.165 million Series A in a round led by Spark Capital and True Ventures.

The crowd sourced gadget review site led by Engadget and Gizmodo veterans Peter Rojas and Ryan Block launched in July 2009 with $500,000 in seed funding from Betaworks, AOL Ventures and Lerer Media Ventures.

Block tells the Wall Street Journal that Gdgt has “hundreds of thousands of registered users and nearly 17,000 products in its database that users can select to associate with their accounts,” however the traffic would suggest that many of those users aren’t sticking around at this stage.

As of today, Gdgt has an Alexa rank of 12,627 and a Compete rank of 10,101; neither are particularly accurate at measuring true traffic, but Alexa is showing a longer term trend of traffic decline, where as Compete is fairly flat. Both ranks are surprisingly low for a site that has just taken a $3 million round.

The site though is still fairly young, and with Rojas and Block at the helm I wouldn’t be placing bets against them yet.

Gdgt Raises $3.165 Million Series A is a post from: The Inquisitr

Peter Rojas and Ryan Block, the guys behind AOL blog Engadget (Rojas also founded Gizmodo) have launched Gdgt…which is not surprisingly pronounced Gadget.

Gdgt isn’t what you’d expect from the talented pair though, because it’s not a blog. Indeed, the reason I’m writing this post now and not 6 hours ago is because I’m not sure either. Block and Rojas are pitching it as a social network for people who like gadgets, but it’s not at all like Facebook or similar sites. The closest description I can find is forum with some social elements.

The launch of the site has gained a huge amount of attention online, even taking Gdgt down at one stage, so it should start with strong prospects. However its success will come mostly off the back of Rojas and Block’s rightly deserved reputations and not anything the site offers. The problem with Gdgt is that in trying to be different, the site is really very similar to existing sites through its borrowed elements. The question then becomes one of social appeal: can the community be the selling point given you get the same doses of gadget loving elsewhere? If I was betting I’d say yes, but only because Peter Rojas and Ryan Block are running the show. Anyone else and I’d say this was not going to end well.

The explanation video (they needed one to explain the site) as follows:

Go Go Gdgt….Forum? is a post from: The Inquisitr