Ryan Block

Who is Ryan Block?

Ryan Block is a technology journalist and critic. He was the editor-in-chief of AOL’s Engadget before he co-founded the community site gdgt.

Block joined technology news website Engadget as a part-time reporter in June 2004, and started full-time in June 2005. He went on to replace the site's creator Peter Rojas as editor-in-chief in 2007. On May 16, 2007, Block posted a leaked internal email from Apple in which it was revealed that the iPhone and Mac OS X Leopard would both be delayed. The email was later confirmed as fake by Apple PR, but it was reported that its posting by Engadget took $4 billion off Apple's market cap. Block has since noted that the approximate $4b market cap drop was almost immediately pushed back up after he posted that the email was forged.

In July 2008 Block posted on Engadget that he would be stepping down as editor-in-chief to create a new company, leaving then Associate Editor Joshua Topolsky in charge. On 1 July 2009, using $550,000 in initial seed financing received from Betaworks and True Ventures, Block and Rojas launched gdgt; a discussion forum that generates reviews and answers questions about thousands of gadgets. In November of 2013, gdgt was merged with Engadget.