Tech Blog Pioneer GigaOm To Shut Down! Is Professional Blogging Profitable Anymore?

I remember the days before I started Trak.in – GigaOm was one of my favourite blogs, and also one of the inspirations as to why I started trak.in. So, to see GigaOm shutting down due to financial troubles is really sad to hear.

Om Malik, Founder of GigaOm, made an announcement on his blog,

[box type=”shadow” ]“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.”[/box]

While Om Malik had already left GigaOm last year, it was still strutting some great stories every now and then. It is quite obvious that they ran out the money to run the business and jury is still out whether it was due to lack of advertising and subscription revenues or financial mismanagement. I think it was the latter, but we will not talk about that at this time.

It’s just sad to see GigaOm shut down!

Professional blogging still feasible?

The question arises – Is professional blogging still feasible, or has it lost out to new age micro blogging and Social Media.

In my view, professional blogging is far from dead, infact, in some ways it is evolving to become real media that online readers want!

Blogging is no more in the periphery, and sometimes more “main” than traditional mainstream.

Now, I am not talking about those “Make Money Online” blogs, but serious professional blogs that write analytical and PoV stories that are far superior compared to indifferent writing done by most large online publications.

Infact, with the rise of Twitter and Facebook, it’s the mainstream media that is under pressure because one of their strong points was they would break stories often, which attracted readers to them.

Now, most “breaks” happen on Twitter or Facebook and people are flocking to them rather than reading those long-winding indifferent stories that traditional media is used to churning out.

Having said that, it is not all rosy for bloggers. Large advertisers still do not consider bloggers as serious media. And, for bloggers to survive, advertising revenue is of paramount importance.

This needs to change because bloggers can churn out quality content only if they have great writers and journalists, and that costs money!

The good thing is – this scenario is changing. Brands and advertising agencies have started to understand the importance of bloggers, and advertising budget dedicated to bloggers is slowly seeing a rise!

So, while it is a sad day to see GigaOm shut down, it is equally true that good days of professional blogging are still ahead of us…