“According to a spate of tweets from its staffers and also confirmation from sources, iconic tech blog Gigaom is closing down,” Kara Swisher reports for Re/code.
“The site, which was one of the first prominent tech blogs to launch in 2006, has recently hired new management, including an interim CEO,” Swisher reports. “It has, in recent years, focused on its more lucrative research business more than its Web news operations. Gigaom also does events.”
Swisher reports, “Said one staffer to me: ‘They ran out of money.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We guess that badgering once very friendly blogs not to link to their articles didn’t help Gigaom‘s genius management to overcome their utter incompetence, huh?
A little inside baseball: For many years, we linked to Gigaom‘s latest ten Apple-related headlines and some of their Apple-related articles, for free (as are all of our other links to sites), until last August when, out of the blue, a Giagom executive we never heard of before inexplicably demanded in no uncertain terms that we remove all Gigaom material from our site, threatening “legal action.” We tried to explain that we always excerpted, quoted, linked, clearly attributed, and added Takes and additional information, but quickly realized we were getting nowhere (like a bot, he/it just continued accusing us of things we never did and demanding removal). Flabbergasted, confused, and more than a little miffed at being wrongly accused of “copying articles entirely without giving proper attribution” — we’ve never done such a thing ever — we complied and removed Gigaom links from the site.
We were confused, because, as you’d imagine, most sites appreciate the traffic we send their way. Some of our readers subsequently asked where Gigaom went and we told them that Gigaom asked to be removed. Again, it’s simply inexplicable. Of course, our little site alone didn’t kill Gigaom, but with decisions like that — just imagine what else was going on there! — it’s no surprise that they’re de-fscking-funct today. To the Gigaom executive bot who threatened us last August: Enjoy your pink slip, if you haven’t already moved on to killing your next site. May you someday get a clue.
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A statement about Gigaom
Gigaom is winding down and its assets are now controlled by the company’s lenders. It is not how you want the story of a company you founded to end.
Every founder starts on a path — hopeful and optimistic, full of desire to build something that helps change the world for the better, reshape an industry and hopefully become independent, both metaphorically and financially. Business, much like life, is not a movie and not everyone gets to have a story book ending. – Om Malik, Gigaom founder, March 9, 2015
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A brief note on our company
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. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along. — Gigaom Management, March 9, 2015
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“Gigaom Management.” Now there’s an oxymoron if there ever was one.
To Om Malik and the old Gigaom. We’re sorry to see you go, but for us, Gigaom died last summer. RIP for the old Gigaom.
There is a good lesson here that investors would be wise to remember…Most if not All of these business “Consultants” and “Analysts” have NEVER started or run a successful business so its ridiculous how much faith and attention their opinions garner. I can’t believe how many business executives, companies, and investors listen to the drivel that these folks spout. Most are just regurgitating the information they heard from their last supposedly “NDA’d” briefing without really understanding. Good riddance to you!
KAW. Karma at work. I have always found them arrogant. Now they’re just Gigagone. Hopefully for good.
Another company killed by Professional Businessmen.
When people claim that businesses are always better than the government, an example like this should remind them that there are plenty of knuckleheads to go around.
Businesses reap what they sow. Governments bail themselves out at taxpayers expense. 😀
So do some areas of business. Wall Street comes to mind.
Too bad. They had some great reporters. The site became a lot less useful after a redesign and reorganization last year. Then they started having stupidly designed ads pop up over content and never go away. Eventually it became too hard to wade through to the meat of the reporting, so I greatly reduced my time there. Hope Katie Fehrenbacher finds good work. I’ll really miss her reporting on green tech.
I suspect what happened to MDN was a misguided last ditch effart by Gigaom to save the site with questionable tactics. They should learn by now furry primates and Neanderthals do not make good Internet company leaders.
Questionable is an understatement. How does threatening MDN (and, presumably, others) to not list their top 10 latest or cover their articles in any way help to save their site?
Perhaps they preferred to toil in secret anonymity? Not much money in that though is there? Guess they paid the price for their lack of vision. 🙂
Shame this had to happen to Gigaom and not Gizmodo, Fandroid Central and Win Stupid Site.
Never heard of them, which having read the above account I’m am glad of. Heard of similar demands from other blogs or news operations which I have never understood as its free publicity, but then many business bozos can’t think of ‘free’ as ever being a positive even when it’s sending business your way.
Regardless, what MDN does so well is Fair Use. The idiot exec at Gigaom had no right to demand anything.
No more analysts’ quotes on events. Thanks Apple.
Good riddance. I didn’t like them anyway. They deserved to fail.
Gigaom was only getting worse and worse with the link bait headlines and articles.