Gigaom is shutting down paidContent.org as a standalone brand, and is rolling it into the Gigaom site.
Last year, Gigaom acquired paidContent along with the rest of the ContentNext Media assets (which included mocoNews.net, contentSutra and paidContent UK – all of which have been living on paidContent.org) from Guardian News a & Media. The amount wasn’t disclosed, but was reportedly low.
Apparently the paidContent brand itself was not worth enough to Gigom to keep around. Unique visitors on the site have been on the decline with a much more positive picture being painted for Gigaom:
Gigaom Executive Editor Tom Krazit writes, “In a recent survey of paidContent readers, over 75 percent of them told us that they wanted to see more coverage of emerging technology. That’s a natural fit with everything Gigaom stands for, and we therefore decided that honoring the same paidContent commitment to quality under the Gigaom umbrella was the best way to explore the future of emerging media startups, business models, and technologies for our media industry readers.”
That’s from the last post that will be written for paidContent. The site will remain at the URL for a few more weeks, but all its content will be transitioned over to Gigaom.
Gigaom sent subscribers of the paidContent newsletter a notice. Here’s the full text of that:
Thank you for being a paidContent newsletter subscriber. As one of the last remaining independent tech media startups, we have a keen interest in the future of the media business. And, for that reason among many, Gigaom bought paidContent in March 2012 in order to bring increased coverage to our company. But we believe in looking forward and standing together, and in that spirit as of today, we’re going to begin the process of closing down the paidContent site and moving all paidContent content over to Gigaom.
You’ve probably noticed our recent brand refresh, in which we sought to re-emphasize our blogging roots and organize our efforts around a common theme. This chapter is just part of that story; we want to be a unified company presenting one vision of the future of technology to our readers.
Starting today, you’ll find the same content you found on paidContent under a new Gigaom channel called Media, in which Janko Roettgers will continue to define the cord-cutting movement, Laura Owen will explore the future of the printed word in a digital world, and Mathew Ingram will proselytize, antagonize, and philosophize about the intersection of journalism, social media, and whatever crosses his Twitter stream.
As a paidContent newsletter subscriber, you will continue to receive daily updates of our media coverage via the daily paidContent newsletter. In the next few weeks, your subscription will be automatically transferred to the gigaom.com newsletter with a focus on media coverage. If you already subscribe to a gigaom.com newsletter, the media stories will be added to your existing selection. There is no need to do anything but if you would like to update your subscription preferences, please visit gigaom.com/newsletters.
Thank you for your support of paidContent over the years, and stay tuned for more of the same content you’ve come to expect from the site over at Gigaom.
Cheers,
The Gigaom Team
It wasn’t long after Gigaom’s purchase of PaidContent that rumors came out that Gigaom itself was for sale, but obviously nothing ever came of that.
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