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."

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/gigaomni-media-raises-more-than-1-million-2007-11 http://www.webpronews.com/gigaomni-media-raises-more-than-1-million-2007-11#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:38:21 +0000 Doug Caverly http://www.webpronews.com/?p=41992 Thanks to a round of funding, GigaOmni Media is ready to expand some more.  No one’s quite sure how big it’ll get, though - following initial reports that $1 million had been raised, Om Malik himself appeared to say that the amount’s rather higher.

]]> Thanks to a round of funding, GigaOmni Media is ready to expand some more.  No one’s quite sure how big it’ll get, though – following initial reports that $1 million had been raised, Om Malik himself appeared to say that the amount’s rather higher.

At some point, Malik may release a specific figure, but that hasn’t happened yet.  For now, there’s mainly been a lot of “thank you”s directed at the investors: True Ventures, Rakesh Mathur, Venky Harinarayan, and Anand Rajaraman.

Malik also explained what he plans to do with the money.  “[W]e want to scale our operations – both editorial and events – over the next 12 months,” he wrote.  “I will provide more detail about our plans in the coming weeks, including unveiling a new, more simplified look for GigaOM.”

Makeovers are often nice.  That “events” tidbit is also interesting – at the recent NewTeeVee conference, YouTube’s Steve Chen announced his (not entirely keen) interest in HD video, and the convention’s profile is only likely to increase in the future.

We’ll keep an ear out for the exact amount of funding GigaOmni Media received.  Still, it looks like Malik’s more focused on putting the money to good use than showing it off, and that’s an approach that’s hard to disagree with.

Om Malik gets a pass – the poor fellow apparently threw his back out – but Michael Arrington simply forgot to come, leaving us with Leo Laporte and surprise guest Justine Ezarik.

WebProNews presents videos and stories from the BlogWorld & New Media Expo taking place in Las Vegas. View our interviews and coverage of the event.

Laporte and Ezarik deserve credit for sticking around – improvising in front of that many people couldn’t have been fun.  They also deserve credit for giving out some informative tips on blogging.

Laporte and Ezarik both seemed to start out by focusing on their passions – in Ezarik’s case, that involved photography. 

Her fan base grew into existence long before she worried about monetization, and this sequence of events probably occurred for a reason.  “The key in this new media is to be as genuine as you can,” stated Laporte.

He later continued, “If you just write a blog, you’re putting yourself out there,” and Ezarik agreed.  Both of them have encountered critical people, but they try not to censor comments; this effectively ends at least a small part of the blogging relationship.  Instead, killing critics with kindness is a preferred way of dealing with them.

“All this media is about engaging your audience,” Laporte and Ezarik stressed.  Or not abandoning them – once again, the pair deserve a pat on the back for speaking at BlogWorld.

WebProNews Video anchor Abby Prince contributed to this report.

From Om: "FoundRead is a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Just like a GPS system helps us drive through a maze of freeways, the founders and entrepreneurs help their peers navigate the twisted, confusing roads of company building."

I took some pictures of the evening as always of course. If you want to check out some of the folks who were there (or if you always just wondered what Bram Cohen of BitTorrent fame looks like getting a shave) you can check them out here.

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Writers receive press releases, and lots of them. If I’d printed out every one I’ve received over the past 18 months I could fold my way to a horde of origami warriors and take over the world. Until some killjoy steps up with a grin and a flamethrower, but you can’t be big without thinking big.

Web 2.0 as a concept has become big in the online world. I was told by a CEO the first day of the conference that some people were buying sponsorships to the Web 2.0 Summit just to obtain coveted passes to the show.

That’s a pricey ducat. It illustrates the pull that the intangible and frequently unexplainable Web 2.0 concept has on the tech world (but Monkey Bites has Tim O’Reilly’s explanation.) An example of that came to GigaOM founder and long-time Business 2.0 writer Om Malik, in the form of a press release from Level 3 Communications:

Level 3 provides what might be called plumbing around the Ted Stevens household. They provide communications infrastructure. In the seemingly anything-goes world of the Internet, Level 3 is the missionary position in a Web full of chocolate-covered contortionists.

There is nothing wrong with being a plumber, whether it’s Web 2.0 or “the house is flooding” variety. But it’s not exciting. It’s not sexy. It is essential, otherwise Photobucket would not have needed the deal with Level 3 to gain access to its potent bandwidth.

Web 2.0 has been promoted as the place to be in the online world. If you aren’t Web 2.0, whatever you think it means, you may suffer from the desire to belong. It’s no different than wanting to hang out with the cool kids in junior high school; these days the cool Web 2.0 kids are named Battelle, O’Reilly, and Arrington.

Level 3 wants to hang out too. Aspirations can be good things. They give people goals to strive toward, regardless of the obstacles placed before them. Maybe Level 3 just needs to be certain its goals, and those of its shareholders, won’t be clouded by pixie dust.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.