GigaOm And The Death Of Editorial

Remember the old joke about the farmer who won the lottery? A reporter asked him what he’d do now, and he responded he’d just keep on farming till the money was gone.

It seems that running a technology news organization is prone to the same fate, as GigaOm discovered this week. Just last year it received an infusion of $8 million from investors, but this week it ran out of money and abruptly shuttered its offices.

GigaOm offered more than tech editorial, however. It was also an industry research firm as well as an events company. By all accounts, both these lines of business were quite successful in their own right.

On the research side it offered subscription-based access to research from a pool of independent analysts. It also matched up paying software and hardware vendors with analysts to create white papers, webinars, and other commissioned content marketing pieces. (I served as an occasional GigaOm analyst, participating on a webinar and several paid briefings over the last few years).

By using a pool of independent analysts, GigaOm was able to assemble a remarkably strong research team without the overhead of putting them all on the payroll. Based upon conversations with other GigaOm analysts, it had been doing a brisk business in commissioned content marketing. I would find it hard to believe that this line of business was losing money.

Its events business also appeared to be going strong. Next week’s Structure Data Conference in New York City – apparently canceled – sported a healthy list of almost forty sponsors, paying as much as $85,000 each, according to GigaOm’s media kit. Furthermore, such events generally always been packed, suggesting a good level of profitability for this line of business.

What, then, finally did in GigaOm? My inquiries haven’t yielded an official answer, but if the research and events businesses were doing well, then only its editorial effort remains as the prime candidate for money loser of the bunch.

Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/03/11/gigaom-and-the-death-of-editorial/.

Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. Jason Bloomberg occasionally worked for GigaOm as an independent analyst. As of the time of writing, none of the other organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: GigaOm.