Why Larry Hryb and Veronica Belmont

Larry Hryb and Veronica Belmont are two of the most recognizable faces in gaming. You probably know Larry Hryb by his more famous online moniker, “Major Nelson”. He and Veronica run two of the most important gaming video blogs for their respective gaming platforms, the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. In some ways, they also represent the face of their organizations. Though people like Don Mattrick and Kaz Hirai may be at the top of their companies’ pecking orders, Major Nelson and Veronica are the figurehead that the everyday consumer sees most often.

If you want to learn about new products on the Xbox 360, turn to Major’s Minute and the Major Nelson Radio podcast for answers. If you want to see game developments on the Playstation 3, just watch Veronica’s Qore. Their information and popularity drives consumers, and more importantly, creates fanatics for their respective brands.

Both Veronica and Larry have built up both a large cult and mainstream following. While they represent their companies’ brand, they also are hugely popular in their own way. Without Major Nelson, Inside Xbox might still go on, but the dynamic would change completely. Think about what Apple would be like without Steve Jobs. Their success is judged both by their own popularity, but by the impact on their communities and influence in the industry.

Backgrounds: Larry Hryb vs. Veronica Belmont

These two figureheads have taken entirely different paths to stardom. Veronica Belmont has built her career on being in front of the camera. From her beginnings as an intern at CNET to her current work as co-host of Tekzilla, she has showed off her powerful on-screen personality.

Just 27 years old, Veronica has really only been on the tech scene for the past three years, but has major ties to a number of techies, including being romantically involved with Ryan Block, former editor of Engadget, and co-founder of gdgt. She has had roles on a number of different tech shows like Attack of the Show, and formerly hosted Mahalo Daily.

Larry Hryb is the Director of Programming for Xbox Live. That means he listens to the Xbox community and develops programs to best assist and improve it. It’s his job to run an empire of Xbox-related media content including blogs, podcasts and social media messaging. Though his camera presence has garnered great popularity, much of his success revolves around his work behind the scenes, building an impressive community.

Hryb was formerly a programmer for Clear Channel Communications (the radio conglomerate) and has run the Major Nelson blog since before Veronica Belmont graduated college, and he has been heavily involved in programming for much longer. In many ways, their differences take on a very new-school vs. old-school trajectory. But both are extremely accomplished within their own right and work to engage and enhance their gaming communities.

Lights, Camera, Action: Major Nelson Radio vs. Qore

Major Nelson Radio is a long-form weekly podcast that spans a couple of hours with multiple interviews and features. Since 2005, there have been nearly 350 episodes for Major Nelson Radio. That’s nearly 700 HOURS of content. Major’s Minute is another weekly feature, one that boils down a new or interesting development on the Xbox 360 platform.

Qore, on the other hand, is a monthly video podcast, interactive magazine available on the Playstation Network. Qore is currently on episode #18. Tekzilla, a weekly hour-long video podcast, is co-hosted by Patrick Norton and Belmont, but focuses primarily on technology, not gaming. However, it is a large factor of Belmont’s popularity and following.

Twitter Numbers Don’t Lie: @majornelson vs. @veronica

Major Nelson has a substantial following on Twitter. With over 66,000 followers, he’s ranked #2 on Wefollow under the “gaming” tag. He uses his Twitter account to give away Xbox Live points and game codes, as well as to drive traffic to his blog and other community features.

Veronica has over 1,485,000 followers. That’s nearly one and a half million people following her on Twitter. She’s been LISTED nearly 5,000 times by users. That’s a lot of Twitter influence. Her blog is less useful to the Playstation Network community, but has an extremely large impact any time she posts something PS3-related. She’s 66th overall of ALL Twitter users, above @schwarzenegger, @cbsnews and @nfl. Impressive.

The Major Nelson Blog

One of the most important assets for Larry Hryb is the Major Nelson Blog. Hryb first launched MajorNelson.com in 2004, when he started work and quickly became the face of Xbox.

Not only is Majornelson.com a staple site for Xbox 360 gamers, the blog is where many news sources and blogs get their early information. The blog has a Technorati authority of 683, which is high enough to rank within the top 15 of all gaming blogs. In fact, Yahoo Site Explorer shows over 160,000 linkbacks to the site. Major Nelson’s blog is powerful, informational and Xbox 360-centric. For comparison, Veronica’s blog has just over 50,000 linkbacks. Core gaming sites like Kotaku and MTV Multiplayer use Larry’s blog for their lead stories often, even though it is technically just a community and personal blog. It could easily be the most sourced blog in all of gaming.

So Who’s the Videogame Victor?

Both Larry and Veronica have extremely different styles and followings. But though Veronica’s actual popularity may be much greater, Major Nelson’s influence is likely greater. Many big gaming news outlets scour his blog early and often for breaking information, and Hryb has an inside track to Xbox 360 intelligence. He also runs and coordinates an empire of gaming media programming, whereas Veronica is ultimately more of a celebrity personality. What Larry Hryb does behind the scenes is ultimately just as impressive, if not more so, than what he does on-screen.

However, Veronica Belmont is an incredible personality and a rising star in gaming and technology. She has an extremely bright future ahead of her, and has time on her side, as she is very young. With her background in production, she has the opportunity to launch an awe-inspiring media empire as well (in the way that Kevin Rose has done. Larry Hryb may have won the battle today, but the war for gaming giants wages on.