Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Upon hearing that Om was spreading his wings and taking on a new venture, my business partner Howard Thaw, thoughtful guy that he is, whistled out and grabbed a couple of vanity URLs as a gift for Om.  So, without further ado…

http://www.om20.com and http://www.om20.net both temporarily pointed at www.gigaom.com.

The Wall Street Journal has a great piece on Jeff Pulver this morning, and his latest efforts to promote video on the internet.  According to the Journal,

Mr. Pulver is creating his own Internet TV show, which he is modeling on Rocketboom, a popular Internet video-blog that broadcasts a three-minute news show daily. He is considering launching a broader Internet TV subsidiary and is weighing whether to invest in several emerging Internet video companies, though he won’t name them. Someday he wants to start an Internet reality TV show.

I’ll have to check it out. 

Between Jeff, Robert Scoble, Amanda Congdon, Adam Curry and others, it certainly looks like this will be the next big boom.  What I find most interesting is not the citizen journalism aspect of vlogging, but rather the way it adds immediacy to blogs / podcasts.  It’s easy to write a long blog entry.  It’s also easy to record a long podcast and (sidenote) some of those long podcasts oughta be shorter if they’re going to attract an audience beyond the NPR crowd. It’s hard to record a long but effective video.  Rocketboom and it’s ilk record snappy 3 minute shows delivering bite-size easily digested headlines - CNN meets blogging.  I’ll bet there’s real potential for a mixed-media site with video “headlines” and in-depth analysis for those who want to dig deeper. 

Isenberg has a great little rant titled Welcome to the Stupid Internet in response to Tom Giovanetti’s piece last Friday in the San Jose Mercury News.  Isenberg cites facts, and studies to back up his position.  Giovanetti writes scaremongering vignettes.

The Institute for Policy Innovation is a “Think Tank” based in Texas.  Tom is its President.  Tom’s bio makes it clear that he is a marketing guy, not an engineer.  The interesting thing about marketing people is that good marketers take a position, and then offer proof points for that position.  A bad marketer, takes a position, period.  Tom is a bad marketer.  Perhaps that’s why he’s turned to lobbying instead.

Typical of the internet noob that he appears to be, Tom finishes with a drive by swipe at Isenberg’s entry.  In Isenberg’s comments he writes:

Enjoyed your entry on this. Profoundly disagree with you, but enjoyed your entry.  Will you admit you are wrong when all your nightmares and scaremongering don’t come to fruition?

# posted by Tom Giovanetti : 6/13/2006 1:38 AM
 

How will I know when I’m wrong?
# posted by isen : 6/13/2006 3:31 AM

And when did you stop beating your wife, again, Tom?  More flamebait and non-facts, but clearly David is having none of it.

Bad Marketer, Tom!  Make your messes in the backyard, not on the carpet.  Now, outside with you!

It’s confirmed.  Veteran business columnist Om Malik is going solo.  He’s taken some funding, will be stepping back from the day to day fray of Business 2.0, and plans to turn GigaOm and perhaps some other properties he has ideas for, into full fledged media businesses.  

I have to admit, when I saw the ValleyWag piece (and not knowing Josh Quittner’s sense of humor well), I assumed it was a hoax.  Typical ValleyWag fun…  but just in case, and just before I wrote a scathingly satirical piece ripping all the humor-impaired commentators who clearly couldn’t see a joke an inch in front of their faces… I made a couple of phone calls, and dropped a piece of email to Om.  Doh!  Thank goodness I did.

Congratulations on your funding, and your new future, Om.  Welcome to the ranks of entrepreneurs everywhere.

Go Big or Go Home!  Or, perhaps that should be Go Giga, Go Om!