Gawker Traffic Takes a Nosedive, But How Badly?

If the charts (above) that The Atlantic published online today are to be believed, then what we're seeing regarding Gawker's move to a new platform is the Laser Disk moment of online publishing.

Back in February, we chronicled the rage against the redesign by Gawker's readers, whose negative reaction would appear to be supported by the grim chart above. Denton, of course, begs to differ.

Responding to The Atlantic's numbers, Denton tweets that after a 25% drop "Gawker Media pageviews [are] now more than halfway back."

The Gawker founder includes a chart of his own.

Former Gawker editor and The Awl founder Choire Sicha writes that "I don't buy the numbers being representative…," adding "Still, it's interesting that Denton is sending out pageview charts in response, as he doesn't care about pageviews."

Regardless of whom one believes, the traffic numbers across the Gawker Media network, which includes Gizmodo, iO9, Jezebel, and Deadspin in addition to its namesake site, are down. Certainly, Gawker's content quality has not fallen off since the redesign (and in fact, it may have improved) so what's to blame other than the redesign itself?

There are some technical explanations, but a commentor on Sicha's piece at The Awl may have the asnwer, "The Gawker redesign is appropriate for 2015 and not 2011. They need to scale back and create a structure they can grow into. Not the mess they have now."