New Gizmodo en Español Tech Blog Makes Debut

The site targets Spanish-speaking audiences in Spain and the Americas

The new Gizmodo en Español launched Monday, marking the first part of Gawker Media’s international expansion.

The site seeks to keep the essence of Gawker’s well-known Gizmodo tech blog, “and to develop that for Latino audiences, Spanish-speaking audiences, in Spain and Latin America,” publisher Daniel Mauser said.

The site has writers in both New York and Madrid, and many of its readers are in Spain, said Mauser, who is the head of Spanish titles for Gawker Media.

“Right now the bulk of our readers are coming from Spain and a large portion from Mexico and the rest of Latin America,” he said.

Gizmodo en Español hopes to add Spanish speakers in the U.S., and increase its coverage in Latin America and Spain as well, Mauser added.

“There’s no shortage of tech blogs in the U.S., but there is a shortage of blogs in Spanish about tech,” he said, and the site hopes to become a channel for U.S. Hispanics who are interested in tech but may read about it in English now.

The site replaces a previous version that ran for seven years. Gawker owned it, but licensed a third party to publish the site for an audience in Spain, whereas the new version is being run in-house, Mauser said.

The launch takes place at the same time as the annual International Consumer Electronics Show, which runs from Tuesday to Friday in Las Vegas. Mauser said coverage of the 2013 CES would probably dominate the page this week.

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Gizmodo en Español won’t just have a purely tech focus overall, however.

“But what we want to do is beyond being just a tech blog, we want to be a blog that impacts how technology impacts people’s daily lives. And that includes design, how-to’s, the latest on automobile news as well, and video games,” Mauser said. “So the important thing here is not so much to cover technology itself, but how technology impacts our lives and its users. And that’s really the differentiator between Gizmodo and the other blogs out there and other sites that cover technology.”

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Mauser, who is originally from Mexico City and has lived in New York for 10 years, founded Guanabee.com, an English-language website that provides “spicy coverage for Latinos.” Gawker Media recently acquired the site. Mauser said he will continue to publish Guanabee as he oversees Gizmodo en Español.

The editor of Gizmodo en Español is Manuel Ángel Méndez, who previously wrote for El País. He wrote about some significant news for the new site – Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s statement to El País that his company’s relationship with Microsoft may or may not continue – which was shared with the English-language Gizmodo, Mauser said.

“And that’s big news, because the reason why people feel Nokia is so relevant is that Microsoft is providing them with a mobile operating system,” he said.

The site is published through a new tech platform, Kinja, which Mauser said puts a higher emphasis on discussions, allows users to create their own blog posts, and creates dialogues between writers and users in a much more streamlined way.

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