Nicholas Carlson reports that a couple “insiders” have said GigaOm is “on the block,” with one saying the company has been “flirting with Bloomberg and Dow Jones.”

Earlier this year, GigaOm acquired PaidContent, another industry publication.

Time is already republishing PaidContent articles. If GigaOm is really looking to sell, perhaps Time Warner could be a potential suitor. GigaOm also partnered with TheStreet in 2010 to share content and audiences.

GigaOm has yet to respond to our request for comment.

On the company’s about page, GigaOm claims to have an audience of 5.5 million monthly unique readers. While Compete’s numbers are often much lower than publishers’ internal analytics, the firm had GigaOm at 219,288 unique visitors in the U.S. for the month of May. Here’s a list of some of the top industry publications and their numbers.

For perspective, Business Insider itself announced that it hit 15 million uniques yesterday (compared to Compete’s U.S. count of 2,681,606 for May), and WebProNews had 5.2 million in May (compared to Compete’s count of 2,239,178 in May).

GigaOm isn’t the only industry publication rumored to be for sale. Rumors of talks between Mashable and CNN have recently been back in the media as well.

Splash.FM is a site that allows you to create a profile, follow your friends and other influencers, browse for songs, and “Splash” the ones you love. Billboard Magazine called Splash.FM “a Twitter for music discovery.” In a quick snapshot, users are able to view song charts of which tracks are trending amongst their friends and on the site overall, as well as what has been “splashed” most recently. Best of all, users get credit where credit is due; users are assigned a “Splash Score” (from 0-99), a ranking system that visibly rewards users for discovering good music early.

Splash co-founder Jason Fiedler explained the Splash score to Janko Roettgers, a writer for GIGaom, via email:

“I think a Klout-type score is extremely powerful for two reasons. First, it quantifies something that is extremely abstract- influence. Second, the ability to compare people’s influence as a score creates competition and a gamification layer that drives further engagement. We’re all ‘virtual narcissists.”

The site, co-founded by Alex Gatof and Jason Fiedler, was created based on the premise that friend-sourced song recommendations are more powerful than any other algorithm that currently exists in online music consumption. “Nothing beats friend-based recommendations. It’s true with many categories—clothes, television shows, movies—but especially true with music,” says Fiedler, “There is something about the social nature of it; music just sounds better on Splash.FM.”

During the past three months of Private Beta testing, Gatof and Fiedler have absorbed feedback and implemented several key changes designed to make Splash.FM even stronger for its Public Beta Launch. Users can expect to see the following new amenities in the Splash.FM public beta suite:

Sign-Up: Anyone can sign-up via Facebook, Twitter, or create a username / password.

Home Page: Non-logged-in users will be able to browse the “Everyone” splash feed and trending “Top Tracks” chart to get a taste of what’s happening on the site before they sign-up.

Filters: The Most Splashed Songs can now be filtered to include just the “Last 7 Days” or “All-Time” on the site; amongst both the people you follow and everyone site-wide.

Roll Down: The site will automatically play from one song to the next.

Global Search: The search tool allows you to search songs, artists, and users – so you can easily find what/who you’re looking for.

Comments: These are now displayed as part of each Splash (without clicking to expand) so that you can add more flavor to why you’re splashing a particular song, and compel friends to Ripple (ie: Re-Splash) you.

Splash Score: The algorithm has been improved.

Featured Splashers: This is a new “icon” indicating verified splashers with established music taste and credibility, such as: DJs, artist, industry, radio personalities and cool brands (essentially a stamp-of-approval that these users are worth following).

Layout: Based on user feedback, Splash.FM has implemented a more intuitive site layout for sharing and discovery.

Looking Forward

The next phase of the site is going to be even more catered to the artist and the user, offering artists valuable analytics and the user exclusive perks, all with the ability to monetize the Splash Score. The mobile application is also a core focus, expected for release within the next two months.

Feedback On Twitter

Many people are tweeting in approval of Splash.FM:

Will Splash.FM be the next guilty pleasure for music snobs? Tell us what you think of this new platform.

"TheStreet is a leader in high-quality, professionally-produced financial content, and their coverage in the technology, communications, and cleantech sectors and the attractive audience that content attracts makes them an ideal partner for GigaOM," said Paul Walborsky, CEO of GigaOM. 

"We look forward to working hand-in-hand with the editorial, analyst, and business teams at TheStreet to share content across our joint network of sites, to co-author research reports that deliver critical insights into the technology-driven industries we jointly cover and to introduce our respective audiences to each other’s brands and service offerings," added Walborsky.

"Our partnership with GigaOM builds on TheStreet’s recent content and audience-sharing arrangements with other best-in-class partners from Newsweek to Nightly Business Report to the personal finance site Bundle – all organizations that understand the distinct value of TheStreet’s quality, action-oriented content in the financial vertical," said Daryl Otte, CEO of TheStreet. 

"As a well-followed brand in the leading areas of technology with a highly-engaged audience and deep roots into the vibrant West Coast technology community, GigaOM delivers to TheStreet great incremental distribution while lending significant new resources and insight to our already strong offerings in the technology sector. We are pleased to be teaming with such an influential partner," said Otte.

GigaOm and TheStreet have already released a co-branded report available through GigOm Pro, the publication’s paid service.

Om Malik has now raised $5.8 million since his firms inception. The latest funding round was led by  Alloy Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm.

Giga Omni Media is a blog network that owns seven websites including GigaOM, WebWorkerDaily, NewTeeVee, OStatic, Earth2Tech, jkOnTheRun and TheAppleBlog. The company has also entered the conference business with two successful conferences last year, Structure and Mobilize.

According to a blog post by founder Om Malik, Giga Omni Media plans to use this money to aggressively expand:

"We are going to use this new investment prudently, to enhance our technology platform and content offerings, add to our current portfolio of publications and expand our Events and Briefings businesses. We are in investing for the long-term — in ourselves."

Her article covers a number of different examples of search verticals and shows how they are succeeding in meeting the relevancy demands of their users in much more efficient way than Google may ever be able to do. However with that said, the end goals of vertical search and the end goals of Google seem to me to be divergent.

Vertical search has the ability to ask very specific questions that they know are relevant to the query. Google on the other hand cannot make assumptions as to the specific needs of the user. Given the strength of branding that Sramana imagines these vertical search tools to obtain, she believes circumventing the need for Google and going right to the vertical search could pose a long term business problem for Google that they might never be able to over come.

Still the following quote from Sramana got me really thinking:

“At the back of my mind is a vision that is much bigger than vertical search. It is Web 3.0, a summation of context, community, commerce, content, vertical search and personalization. In the end, new brands able to build deep, rich, highly personalized Web 3.0 user experiences would become Google’s real competition.”

How do you feel about this conclusion? Does it feel to you like vertical search from a strong brand could be the challenge that Google is unprepared to meet?

Comments

As many in the blogosphere are just discovering, GigaOm founder Om Malik has a good reason for being absent from his namesake blog for the past few days. A coronary episode put him out of action, according to a post at GigaOm he penned today:

I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment that night and have been recovering here ever since. With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be OK.

That support included a purging of all kinds of indulgences from his home. Malik said his apartment is now free of “smokes, scotch and all my favorite fatty foods.”

Well-wishers have been invited to leave their best wishes in the comments of the blog post, and as of this writing 140 comments have been made there. We wish him a speedy and full recovery.

The American Heart Association website provides lots of information on and the prevention of cardiac problems. It’s well worth a read by everybody. Ladies should also check out the Association’s Go Red For Women movement, as a step toward thwarting the number one killer of American women.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/om-malik-on-the-mend-2008-01/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/reactions-to-amazon-mp3-store-2007-09 http://www.webpronews.com/reactions-to-amazon-mp3-store-2007-09#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:22:43 +0000 Bruce Houghton http://www.webpronews.com/?p=40667 Our news story and analysis "What The Amazon Store Is...And Is Not" got so many links and hits that we thought we'd take a look across the web to see what other's thought of the opening of Amazon's MP3 Download Store.]]> Our news story and analysis "What The Amazon Store Is…And Is Not" got so many links and hits that we thought we’d take a look across the web to see what other’s thought of the opening of Amazon’s MP3 Download Store.

Engadet - "If you’re into DRM-free music, you have a reason to get pretty excited today."

Om Malik @ GigaOM – "Bottom line: 26 out of 50. I am not ready to write Amazon off just yet. We might have a worthy competitor…"

David Card of Jupiter Research - "Amazon’s 2.3 million song catalog is fairly crippled…But pretty soon, consumers will see the fruit of competition based on pricing, merchandising, packaging, user experience, editorial, knowledge of consumer habits, etc., etc., instead of on random acts of technology…The game just got a lot more interesting.

Hypebot Comment by Bruce Warila - "Is Amazon going to make the pie bigger or divide it? I am doubtful that the paid download market is going to keep growing…:  (more great comments from Hypebot readers here.)

Tag:

It’s probably best to focus on the business arrangement, however, and according to a press release, “Through this deal, TheFind gains a leading fashion destination site that identifies and delivers the hottest trends in women’s fashion, while Glimpse.com users gain access to TheFind’s unparalleled roster of online boutiques, specialty fashion retailers and leading brand stores.”

Siva Kumar, CEO of TheFind, also stated, “This acquisition further proves our ongoing commitment to providing the most engaging, efficient and fun online shopping search experience for our fashion-savvy consumers.”

Of course, as exuberant and chatty as both corporations were about the takeover, neither disclosed the purchase price.  Yet “market share” and “people count” graphs at GigaOM and Frostfirebuzz.com both represent Glimpse as a virtual flatline, so it’s likely that not much cash passed hands.

For this reason, don’t be surprised if TheFind continues to buy up other sites.  The company could have just been keeping mum, but a month and a half ago, TheFind received $15 million in financing, and it had no clear plans for the funds at the time.

A quick description of the beta site from Kongregate‘s About page:

Kongregate seeks to create the leading online hub for players and game developers to meet up, play games, and operate together as a community.

By wrapping user-submitted Flash games with various community features, Kongregate’s site serves as a unique way for users to play great web-based games alongside friends. Anyone can add their own games to Kongregate’s library in a process that’s fast and simple.

But don’t expect to be able to embed the games on your site or blog, what plays at Kongregate stays at Kongregate.

"All this sounds promising," opines Blake Snow at GigaOm, "but unlike other proven online communities, making a enjoyable Flash game takes a lot more time and talent than, say, uploading a funny video, and that barrier limits Kongregate’s content stream."

If Kongregate takes off, the timing is right for them. In an increasingly attention-fueled online economy, online gaming is expected to grow 70 percent year-over-year, grabbing $1 billion a year in advertising by 2010.

It will be especially interesting to learn if the magic YouTube concept can be applied to games.

StumbleUpon Stumbles Into eBay For $75 Million

Both TechCrunch and GigaOM predicted yesterday the StumbleUpon purchase would be completed, and were proved correct.

eBay announced it would pick up StumbleUpon for about $75 million. StumbleUpon originated in Canada, and provided a browser toolbar that allows users to click a button and find sites within their selected areas of interest.

Those sites would be ones tagged by other StumbleUpon users, and each user can vote sites up or down when they appear in a Stumble. The simple yet effective concept caught on quickly, and the company moved to California to be closer to the action in Silicon Valley.

StumbleUpon claims a userbase of 2.3 million. They recently launched a video product called StumbleVideo, which focuses on video results.

Michael Buhr, a senior director at eBay, will become StumbleUpon’s general manager. As one of StumbleUpon’s happy users, I’m hoping eBay won’t turn the product into a non-stop lovefest of auctions appearing in the Stumbles.