上面兩條推特截圖，讓人無限傷感。一個(gè)見證了硅谷無數(shù)奇跡的印度小老頭，最后，會(huì)以這樣的方式離開他自己一手打造的公司。事實(shí)上，他打造的這個(gè)公司也是一個(gè)奇跡，作為科技媒體，GigaOM 不輸給任何小、巧的科技媒體。這個(gè)小老頭，可以失去他的公司，但是，不會(huì)失去他的幽默感和他的睿智，還有他的鍵盤。我們一定會(huì)再次看到他以某種方式繼續(xù)給我們講述硅谷的故事，至少，我們可以看到他長(zhǎng)歌當(dāng)哭，為 GigaOM畫上一個(gè)圓滿的句號(hào)。
我在《自媒體的中國(guó)故事 vs 博客的美國(guó)傳奇（第二部分）》 ?中寫了六位美國(guó)的著名博客，麥特·德拉吉，阿里安娜·赫芬頓，尼克·丹頓，奧姆·馬利克，埃文·威廉姆斯，喬納森·佩雷帝。其中，我最不看好的，是麥特·德拉吉，因?yàn)椋@樣的激進(jìn)、報(bào)料型博客，這個(gè)世界已經(jīng)不那么需要了；最看好的是奧姆·馬利克，因?yàn)樗龅氖虑椋淮蟛恍。ぬ?shí)實(shí)，誰知道，我看走了眼。麥特·德拉吉在最近時(shí)代雜志的網(wǎng)絡(luò)最有影響力的人榜單中遙遙領(lǐng)先，而馬利克被掃地出門。
他有兩句名言：I love possibilities, I believe in people & imagineering.希望，我們可以面對(duì)最好的 possibilities ，希望他的信念給大家?guī)磉@位印裔硅谷博客的好消息。
硅谷著名科技博客網(wǎng)站 GigaOM 今天（美國(guó)太平洋時(shí)間3月9日）發(fā)出一條簡(jiǎn)短的公告，由于無力償還債務(wù)，GigaOM 已停止運(yùn)營(yíng)，將聽?wèi){債權(quán)人發(fā)落。
2001年，奧姆·馬利克（OM Malik）創(chuàng)辦了一個(gè)以自己的名字命名的公司和網(wǎng)站GigaOM，一個(gè)Web2.0博客網(wǎng)站（a Web2.0 blog）。這個(gè)最初由他一個(gè)人經(jīng)營(yíng)的“自媒體”不斷壯大，逐步匯聚了一批卓越的博客與作者，成了他此后的唯一的事業(yè)平臺(tái)，也進(jìn)入了硅谷最有影響力的科技 博客新聞網(wǎng)站行列。在全球博客50強(qiáng)和CNET最有影響力的100強(qiáng)博客榜單中，GigaOM常常露臉。
GigaOM在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)泡沫破滅后的谷底創(chuàng)立，然后，伴著硅谷一起再出發(fā)、成長(zhǎng)。GigaOM幾乎見證了此后的每一個(gè)硅谷奇跡，并且與這些奇跡的創(chuàng)造者們結(jié)下了不解之緣。GigaOM每年都會(huì)舉辦一系列的大小活動(dòng)，硅谷的大佬們常常會(huì)現(xiàn)身來為老朋友捧場(chǎng)。
奧姆·馬利克（OM?Malik）是一個(gè)印度裔的美國(guó)科技作家、企業(yè)家，他是硅谷著名的科技博客網(wǎng)站GigaOM的創(chuàng)始人，當(dāng)然，也是這家網(wǎng)站的重要作者。
奧姆1993年移居紐約為《海外印度》雜志撰稿，不久他加盟福布斯雜志，并成為其重要的科技作者。他同時(shí)也是著名雜志RedHerring的資深作者。?1994年年底，他創(chuàng)辦了一個(gè)為印度移民服務(wù)的新聞網(wǎng)站。1995年，他參與創(chuàng)辦了一份雜志Masala，以及同名的一個(gè)南亞門戶網(wǎng)站。1997年，奧姆?參與了福布斯網(wǎng)站的創(chuàng)辦。1999年，他離開福布斯網(wǎng)站，進(jìn)入一家著名的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資公司出任投資經(jīng)理。但是，他很快放棄了那份工作，因?yàn)椋矚g寫作，而?不是數(shù)錢。
這位才華橫溢的科技記者，幾年間不斷地轉(zhuǎn)軌，始終沒有找到自己穩(wěn)定的定位，他不斷地從一個(gè)公司轉(zhuǎn)到另一個(gè)，不斷地創(chuàng)業(yè)又不斷地失敗。
2000年，也就是在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)第一次泡沫進(jìn)入巔峰期的時(shí)候，他移居到舊金山，成為著名的Business?2.0雜志的高級(jí)撰稿人。從此，他和尼克·丹頓一樣，開始和科技博客們廝混，并在硅谷扎根下來，未曾離開一步。
－－－－－－－－－－－
相關(guān)報(bào)道
快跟Gigaom告別吧！這家老牌科技博客因資金問題撐不下去了！
Recode中文站的報(bào)道
Gigaom的突然倒閉留給我們什么思考？ 36K的報(bào)道
－－－－－－－－－－－
Gigaom’s Mathew Ingram: “I don’t think anyone expected this”
by Chris Thompson Published Mar. 10, 201510:14 pm
At 5:57 Pacific Standard Time yesterday evening, the managers of?Gigaom?posted one last news story: it was shutting down.
Gigaom, the business and technology news site that was widely regarded as one of the world’s most crucial sources of industry news, shocked that very industry by shutting down last evening, laying off all of its employees, and offering nothing more than acryptic itemon its Web site: “Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased.”
Phone calls to the company’s West Coast office were met with this equally mysterious notice: “Hello. We are not available now. Please call again. Thank you for your call.”
Just like that, one of Silicon Valley’s must-reads collapsed without a word of warning. According toMathew Ingram, a senior writer at Gigaom and one of the site’s most respected reporters, the staff had no idea that the company was bleeding money so fast. “We all knew we were losing money,” Ingram said. “But we’ve been losing money for eight years. I don’t think anyone expected this.”
In 2006, technology reporter Om Malik founded Gigaom as a Silicon Valley-centered news aggregation site and soon built it into one of the industry’s most-read Web sites, employing roughly 22 editors and writers and attracting 6.4 million viewers a month. The company relied on three revenue streams to recoup its creditors’ investment: research, news reporting, and hosting expensive technology conferences. According to Ingram, reporting was the least lucrative of these ventures, but at least it drew eyeballs to the site.
“It was a great way to get people to see us and build new customers and get people to go to our conferences,” Ingram said.
But as time went on, Ingram added, other news media outlets began to see the value in hosting conferences. And as outlets such as theAtlanticand theNew York Timesbegan organizing high-minded TED Talks, the entrance prices for such conferences began to decline.
“Everyone decided that conferences was a great way to make money. But now everyone has piled onto the market,” Ingram said. “Over time, that decreases your market share.”
As advertising revenue has been wiped out by the rise of Craigslist, Amazon, and Google, media companies have been struggling to find new ways to make money. Om Malik found a way early on by organizing conferences and drawing smart people together for a price. Now the secret is out, and every other outlet is in the game. If gatherings of experts and charging money to hear them talk can’t pay the bills, what can?
Ingram had a feeling something was wrong with Gigaom a few weeks ago. Still, he said, when the hammer came down last night, the mood among the staff was one of surprise and dismay.
“One minute you’re working on a story, and the next minute someone is telling you you don’t have a job, and they’re turning the lights out.”
－－－－－－－－－－－－
Gigaom is dead. Long live Gigaom
Written by Mathew Ingram? ? ??Mar 14, 2015
Last week, the place I’ve called my online home for over five years?—?a site that has been one of the leading tech blogs ever since my friend Om Malik started it in the Starbucks at the corner of Clay and Battery in San Francisco in 2006?—?suddenly shut down. Gigaom was always more than just a job for me, and its ending has hit me like the sudden death of a close friend. Likemanyofmyformercolleagues, I am still trying to process all of the feelings and thoughts its closure has triggered and understand why and how it happened. I consider this post part of that process?—?I’m certainly not claiming to have any definitive answers.
Everyone wants to know why Gigaom failed, andwhat it says aboutthe online media market. I feel as though I should know, if only because I was one of the site’s media writers, and I have written so many times about the challenges other online outlets have faced. In fact, I’ve heard from more than one person who sees Gigaom’s death as some kind of karmic retribution for my past criticism of outlets like theNew York Times—?and perhaps it is. Frankly, it’s as good an explanation as any other.
For me, the business realities and technical aspects of Gigaom are all tied up with my feelings about the place, and about my friend Om Malik, who took a crazy gamble and quit his job to start a blog, and eventually built what I consider to be one of the best teams of writers and editors I’ve ever worked with. I have zero regrets about agreeing to leave a comfy newspaper job and join him in that quest, despite the unfortunate way it ended. Was it the best online media business ever? No. But it was a pleasure and a privilege to work there, and I am proud of what we accomplished.
If there’s one thing that bothers me about the site’s sudden closure, it’s that it might jeopardize the careers of or influence how people see my colleagues?—?excellent writers and editors likeStacey HigginbothamandKatie FehrenbacherandJanko RoettgersandLaura OwenandKevin TofelandDerrick HarrisandKevin FitchardandDavid MeyerandJeff RobertsandBarb DarrowandKif LeswingandJonathan VanianandBiz CarsonandSigne BrewsterandCarmel DeAmicis. If you haven’t already reached out to hire them, you should. They are rock stars, and they don’t deserve to have their work denigrated in this way, with bank trustees telling them to turn in their laptops and shut off the lights when they leave.
I’ve talked to several media outlets about Gigaom’s death?—?includingDigidayand thePoynter Instituteand theColumbia Journalism Review—?and that has helped me think through some of the issues around the closure and what it means (although I am still processing it). Was Gigaom killed by its reliance on outside venture capital, assome have argued? In part, I think it was. As I mentioned in one interview, VC money is a Faustian bargain of the first order: it gives you the freedom to grow quickly, but it also puts pressure on a company to show meteoric growth, and there is a harsh penalty for not doing so?—?and the media industry isn’t exactly known for meteoric growth of the kind VCs like to see.
One aspect that many people are ignoring, however, is that Gigaom also took on debt, via a financing with several lenders including Silicon Valley Bank, in an attempt to juice its growth even further. In a different kind of market or at a different time, this might have worked?—?but ultimately the company failed to produce enough cash to service that debt, and I think that is part of what took it down (peter Kafka at Re/codehasmore on that). Creditors are orders of magnitude less accommodating than shareholders or equity investors, and they tend to be a lot more nervous. When they want their money, all the happy stories about future growth that startups tell VCs mean nothing.
Was Gigaom also killed by the merciless evolution of the online media market? I think to some extent that’s true as well?—as I told CJR, when Gigaom started, and even up to a few years ago, having a staff of 50 and 6 million unique visitors a month would have seemed like a huge success. But in a world in which behemoths like BuzzFeed and Vice are the paragons of virtue, with thousands of staff and massive traffic, Gigaom must have looked like a pipsqueak, and that affects everything from advertising to funding.
There’s a sort of barbell effect: If you are super small and super focused and super niche you can succeed, arguably. And if you’re super huge and mass and gigantic and growing quickly, you can succeed. But in the middle, is death. The valley of death. So arguably we got caught in that valley of death.
The other aspect of the business is that Gigaom has never been just an editorial operation that lived and died on advertising. One of the most innovative aspects of the Gigaom model was that it had three legs: ad-funded editorial, events (conferences), and a subscription research arm where analysts wrote reports for corporate clients. I still believe that this model can work, despite what some might argue is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s very similar to the model that a publisher likeThe Economistuses, for example. Ad-supported editorial helps build a relationship with readers, and events and subscription products eventually monetize that relationship, if everything works properly.
I don’t have?—?and never did have?—?access to the in-depth financial aspects of Gigaom’s business (and perhaps I should have, as my former colleague Celeste LeCompte arguedin a recent Nieman Lab piece). But my understanding of what happened is that the editorial side of the business was not the problem. Was it hugely profitable? No. But was it doing any worse than plenty of other editorial outlets in terms of revenue or cash flow? No?—?in fact, quite a bit better than many, as far as I can tell. But ultimately the research arm seems to have failed to generate enough cash to justify the money that investors (and creditors) lent us to build it. Whose fault is that? I honestly have no idea. Was the model flawed, or just the execution of it? Again, I simply don’t know.
Some have argued that Gigaom was guilty of an excess of hubris, and that instead of trying to grow into something so quickly, it should have taken the slower approachof a niche site like Search Engine Land. There is certainly nothing wrong with that idea?—?sites like Danny Sullivan’s or Jessica Lessin’sThe Information, or Mike Masnick’sTechDirt, or Ben Thompson’s tech analysis blogStratecheryare great examples of how small can be good. But that doesn’t mean creating such a site is the only way to go?—?others would like to reach for the stars, and that desire is a big part of what makes Silicon Valley what it is: an infuriating place filled with hubris and ego, but also a great example of what people can achieve when they push themselves.
Did Gigaom fail in its attempt to reach that goal? Yes. But that doesn’t mean the goal wasn’t worthwhile, or that what we built while striving to reach it was any less great. I would like to thank my friend Om for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, and I would like to thank all of my colleagues for the pleasure of working with one of the best editorial teams on the planet. I am happy to call you my friends as well as my former co-workers and colleagues. It was a great ride. Onward!
