GigaOm Pro Launches

Yesterday GigaOm boldly launched GigaOm Pro. As detailed in his introductory post, Om has long envisioned this step as an essential piece in the evolution of the business & technology media landscape. Blogs have proven to be incredibly powerful in breaking news and stimulating conversation around a topic from thousands of thoughtful perspectives (Katrina, Mumbai, Sully’s Flight). In this manner, blogs have changed the media landscape forever.

But in our assessment, the potential of blog-based media is still in it’s infancy, and there remains tremendous opportunity for new media companies to go deeper on topics, create longer form, more in-depth discussions of important trends, and follow stories over time (much in the way that traditional journalism has famously done in news papers . . .think the Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate over multiple stories and months of doggedly pursuing a thesis, or their more recent series on Walter Reed Hospital – both examples top of mind as they were so eloquently discussed this past week at D7 by Katharine Weymouth and Arianna Huffington). Instead of just breaking the news, the best of traditional journalism has often change our world in long form and over a series of stories.

New media has this potential, but to succeed it will require combining all of the hustle and speed of today’s bloggers with new product attributes. Longer-form journalism online requires different packaging, an analytical perspective, significantly different form, and the fostering of a community engaged over the duration of a story or trend’s analysis. Most importantly, in order to produce and enable this type of discussion, new media companies must possess a culture that believes in journalism first, page views last.

We’re surely biased, but we believe GigaOm is incredibly well positioned for this opportunity. The company has successfully built and scaled a network of sites in our industry’s most significant sectors. The talent on the editorial team has broken important stories, established a credible voice in our ecosystem, and consistently produces fantastic analysis. Most importantly, GigaOm has been built on an ethos of journalistic integrity. For everyone who knows and reads Om and his team, it’s overwhelmingly clear that they are first and foremost journalists (and very good ones).

But there is more to do. A longer, more thoughtful conversation is waiting to be had, and GigaOm has just started it.

We’re excited to see Om and Paul evolve the media landscape with GigaOm Pro. Congratulations to the entire team on a really well executed product launch, and congratulations on so boldly evolving our industry.