Blogging for fun... then profit: And then, during one soul-searching month this spring, the writer who writes about start-ups decided to stake his reputation and his income on starting one himself.
Or to put it another way: Open mouth, insert money.
The money in this case was a little less than $1 million from True Venture Partners. They're betting that Malik can take his significant connections and experience and roll it into a profitable micropublishing venture based at gigaom.com. Malik's new business will be called GigaOmniMedia Inc.
Malik is the latest in a string of bloggers who are finding financial backing for their news-oriented sites. Another daily news blog, Paidcontent.org, recently received modest funding, as did Christoper Carey of Sharesleuth.com.
Marketers Curious About Blogs, But Not Spending: The study, "Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2006," found that marketers are putting most of their money in e-mail, search, behavioral and contextual targeting, and rich media. More than 65 percent of those surveyed plan to invest in each of these mediums in the next year.
"Marketers are very curious about social channels like blogs, but are not putting their money in that space," said Shar VanBoskirk, a research analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, MA. "Instead, the momentum is really in behavioral targeting and in rich media."
Media and communication firms lead in exploring adopted channels. More than 60 percent of them use or plan to use e-mail marketing, social marketing, rich media e-mails and display ads, contextual and behavioral targeting, blogs/social networks, RSS and mobile marketing within the next year.
