The state of the media industry (i.e. failure of Gigaom and the success of Buzzfeed) seems to be a pretty strong counterexample to the oft-given advice by YC and others that "It’s better to build something a small number of users love than something a lot of users like"[1].
Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
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Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#22The state of the media industry (i.e. failure of Gigaom and the success of Buzzfeed) seems to be a pretty strong counterexample to the oft-given advice by YC and others that "It’s better to build something a small number of users love than something a lot of users like"[1]. [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/startup-advice-briefly
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Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#23I find surprising that sites like Gigaom and Dr. Dobbs which actually try to provide value to their users with original content, die because their ad revenues are not suffice to cover up their costs, while site like Buzzfeed, filled with clickbaity headlines, and dumb articles, pass $100M in revenues[1]. Perhaps, it seems like 'content-is-the-king' is not optimal if you are looking for revenues. [1]: http://www.capit…
I see this as roughly analogous in any form of media. EG, the commercially successful artists in music are generally pop (Katie Perry, beiber, etc.)
They are the buzzfeed of another market. It seems pretty clear that if you want to go big, you need to compromise on the quality.
"Why" is left as an exercise to the readers.
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#24I find surprising that sites like Gigaom and Dr. Dobbs which actually try to provide value to their users with original content, die because their ad revenues are not suffice to cover up their costs, while site like Buzzfeed, filled with clickbaity headlines, and dumb articles, pass $100M in revenues[1]. Perhaps, it seems like 'content-is-the-king' is not optimal if you are looking for revenues. [1]: http://www.capit…
> I find surprising that sites like Gigaom and Dr. Dobbs which actually try to provide value to their users with original content, die because their ad revenues are not suffice to cover up their costs, while site like Buzzfeed, filled with clickbaity headlines, and dumb articles, pass $100M in revenues.
Sure it is -- but if you are selling eyeballs, then the content is king is content that is geared to get eyeballs and get the maximum number of ad views out of them.
If you are selling content to those consuming it directly, then the utility of the content to the consumer is the key thing -- but that's different than the advertising-supported model.
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#25I found this article frustrating for its avoidance of assigning blame or fault to any of the decisions described. For example: It seems pretty clear that a bunch of work was done on a research product for GigaOm, but their thinking around it was very off target. $79/year is less than a Netflix account costs. Yet, the author doesn't come out and say "and this proved to be a big mistake." GigaOm sounds like a scenario…
Agreed and agreed. Some of those sound like classic pre dot-com crash moves. Offices in Manhattan and SF? Do you really need that? 22 writers, sales staff, developers...Honestly, you could run an operation similar to GigaOm for 1/3rd of the cost.