How many times has this happened to you? You find a good network, platform, app or API to grow your digital IQ and performance, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, there it is, the “service is ending” announcement. Such was the case on March 9 with news of the demise of Gigaom , an excellent online publication that offered news and insight on startups, emerging technologies and trends.
Gigaom was a great resource, which made good on its brand promise to “humanize the impact of technology.” And humanize it did, empowering, educating, ushering and transforming a generation of marketers and small business owners to new levels of digital literacy. However, Gigaom did not operate in a vacuum. Just the thought of what this means for a few of our other favorite sites, such as Wired Magazine, The Next Web, Re/code, VentureBeat, ZDNet, TechCrunch, to name a few, sends a tremor throughout our digital landscape. In an article on Inc.com, contributor Erik Sherman explores whether Gigaom’s shut down is an early sign of a tech bubble. Here are a few highlights from what we’d like to think is a Gigaom post-mortem.
Gigaom was heavily into running events and producing paid research, both of which presumably should have brought in the necessary cash to help support and underwrite the main website that embodied the company’s brand. But, apparently, it wasn’t enough.
Gigaom isn’t the first tech site to feel financial rocking. Last fall, Say Media sold its sites, including xoJane and tech site ReadWrite, to concentrate on its content management system and selling ads for other publishers. …
There’s nothing new in media properties changing hands. Re/code was pulled out of The Wall Street Journal by founders Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher to follow a more independent path with their own investors, for example. But when some of the sites that were established get shaken, it’s a concern bigger than a media insider game.
For those who remember too many details of the bursting tech bubble in the early 2000s, this might cause a shudder. When the giant Ponzi scheme of companies laughing at the idea of revenue and then going public began to fracture, one of the clear signs was the impact on the media that covered them. As massive inflows of investor cash dried up, so did the ad spending spigot.
With all sympathy to the employees of Gigaom, here’s hoping that the company’s failure was a singular problem with sales or its business model and not the precursor of a crash that could hurt many people.
Rest in cyber peace, Gigaom. It was a great nine-year run.
Will you miss Gigaom? Feel free to share your expressions (of sympathy) in the comments section of this post.
GB O’Brien
LGK Principal
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