On the first day of this work week, the tech community was met with the sad news that the highly respected site Gigaom has shut down due to its inability to pay its creditors. In short, it has gone bankrupt.
The official statement released:
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
Who would have thought?
This development has led to a lot of talk about how such a quality, trusted site can go down this path, especially considering that they have received funding (and not a small amount) and that their reporting is undoubtedly one of the best out there.
Founder Om Malik left the company over a year ago, but this turn of events certainly hit him hard. Apart from a succinct post on his blog, he has refrained from commenting on the issue.
That’s not the case with the pundits, though. You can read about all the speculation, analysis, and reactions about the Gigaom shutdown where you go online. Here are a few of them.
Why Gigaom collapsed…
The important lesson behind the GigaOM collapse @scodtt http://t.co/pNlvIaIhN6
— Inc. (@Inc) March 12, 2015
My two cents: it is such a pity that Gigaom, the site that did not jump into the Buzzfeed-style bandwagon, is dead while this article says “There’s only one source of financing that makes companies work–and it’s not what you might think.”
Gigaom’s biggest problem: it stayed private http://t.co/cZCr5Mn9At via @thisisfusion
— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) March 12, 2015
After GigaOm, The Non-VC “SimCity” Approach To Growing A Media Business https://t.co/w3z6oSH6lh my take on why GigaOm may not be a trend
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) March 10, 2015
This last piece seems to be the most solid analysis.
Reactions
An awful day for journalism — it seems Gigaom is closing. What @om and his team did there has been an inspiration to so many others.
— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) March 10, 2015
The tech community laments @gigaom‘s demise: http://t.co/YXeqvTR66e pic.twitter.com/dsKBdDY0i1
— Adweek (@Adweek) March 10, 2015
A cross-country hug to @om & the @gigaom crew: will miss their work there and what it meant; look forward to new things they each will do.
— naveen (@naveen) March 10, 2015
These are barely a handful of tweets lamenting the Gigaom shutdown, and many of them are from readers. I think this next tweet sums things up.
The outpouring of love for @gigaom is an example of a company focusing on the right things, their loyal readers. Most tech pubs don’t.
— Hiten Shah (@hnshah) March 12, 2015
It is sad news, indeed; and but those writers are still out there. In the near future, we just might see something similar.
What do you think of the Gigaom shutdown?
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