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
#2I 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.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/11/8557366/...
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#3I 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…
From the gigaom megathread 6 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9175824
According to the editor-in-chief of Dr. Dobb's, there's been a recent, structural shift.
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#4I 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…
Why is it surprising?
It's faster and cheaper to write clickbait articles, and they have a wider appeal. People are much more likely to click and share something with the name, 'What Disney character are you?' or 'Top 10 reasons you should start going out on Tuesday nights', compared to anything on Gigaom. It takes a lot of time to write proper articles, to check the facts, to follow up with sources, and to maintain a respectable reputation.
I'm sure they could trim the fat, and maintain a small group of dedicated writers, pay the bills and make a living. However, they raised quite a bit of money, so they kind of need to go big or die at this point, and going big is not easy for the reasons I mentioned above.
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#5[deleted]
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#6I 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…
Why is it surprising? It's faster and cheaper to write clickbait articles, and they have a wider appeal. People are much more likely to click and share something with the name, 'What Disney character are you?' or 'Top 10 reasons you should start going out on Tuesday nights', compared to anything on Gigaom. It takes a lot of time to write proper articles, to check the facts, to follow up with sources, and to maintain…
The kind of people paying for Janes.com or AviationWeek can also get all their news for free from MilitaryNews.com or such, but still, these sites continue to flourish and they are only growing because having an AviationWeek subscription is a "status". The kind of niche that was reading the old, industry-centric GigaOm would have no problem paying for such a subscription.
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#7I 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 where people were "playing startup" for several years and eventually reality set in. They appear to have never been profitable, yet they acquired a company, took out a disastrous loan and raised more and more money. From what I'm reading in articles like this, the people running GigaOm sound like they made a lot of dumb decisions, yes, but it also sounds like GigaOm was never really a real business at any point.
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it surprising? It's faster and cheaper to write clickbait articles, and they have a wider appeal. People are much more likely to click and share something with the name, 'What Disney character are you?' or 'Top 10 reasons you should start going out on Tuesday nights', compared to anything on Gigaom. It takes a lot of time to write proper articles, to check the facts, to follow up with sources, and to maintain…
The kind of people paying for Janes.com or AviationWeek can also get all their news for free from MilitaryNews.com or such, but still, these sites continue to flourish and they are only growing because having an AviationWeek subscription is a "status". The kind of niche that was reading the old, industry-centric GigaOm would have no problem paying for such a subscription.
The huge difference is that I imagine that the vast majority of people subscribing to Janes don't do it with their own money, and as such aren't very price sensitive. I imagine that mosy people subscribing to GigaOm are almost certainly doing it with their own money.
Also IHS (the people who publish Janes) have a whole host of other products and well as consulting services, so they can easily afford to run Janes.com at a small loss as part of their marketing budget.
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#9Gigaom is a really boring news site. I read a lot of tech news and blogs and never come across a link to Gigaom. Has the HN front page ever linked to a Gigaom story?
Re: Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture-Funded Media Startup
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The kind of people paying for Janes.com or AviationWeek can also get all their news for free from MilitaryNews.com or such, but still, these sites continue to flourish and they are only growing because having an AviationWeek subscription is a "status". The kind of niche that was reading the old, industry-centric GigaOm would have no problem paying for such a subscription.
The huge difference is that I imagine that the vast majority of people subscribing to Janes don't do it with their own money, and as such aren't very price sensitive. I imagine that mosy people subscribing to GigaOm are almost certainly doing it with their own money. Also IHS (the people who publish Janes) have a whole host of other products and well as consulting services, so they can easily afford to run Janes.com…
I agree that Janes' subscribers are using their corporate credit cards to pay the subscription costs, but I also think that Gigaom had the potentials to walk into the same path.
Take a look at the first screenshot in the story[1], Om Malik describes the site in 2006 as a "broadband weblog". The kind of quality articles on Gigaom were not comparable with link-baity nature of TechCrunch/Mashable or Engadget/Gizmodo. They could have been the Janes of IT industry if they wanted to. Or at least be as affordable as the AviationWeek.
Notice someone on this thread is describing Gigaom as "boring", I take that as a compliment about the fact that the site was very industry-centric and devoid of click-baity stories.
[1] https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/896/1*ajvdVfFtBytF...
