GigaOm Expands - New Video Only Blog
Om Malik's growing blog empire expanded today with the launch of NewTeeVee, a blog covering the exploding world of online video. The primary contributors will be Malik and GigaOm writers Liz Gannes and Katie Fehrenbacher, with contributions from Jackson West …
Context & Ripple Effects
Om Malik has been circling online video from his core broadband beat since at least February 2006, when his coverage of the Dabble video-search startup signaled the topic was outgrowing occasional posts. NewTeeVee makes that interest structural: rather than folding video into Om Malik on Broadband, GigaOm stands up a separate property with Liz Gannes and Katie Fehrenbacher as lead writers and Jackson West contributing.
The launch was announced across three surfaces at once — TechCrunch, GigaOM itself, and NewTeeVee's own welcome post — which is itself the story's mechanics: an established indie blog using its existing audience to bootstrap a new vertical rather than raising money or hiring outside editors.
First-order effects
- Malik, Gannes, and Fehrenbacher now split their output between the flagship broadband blog and a dedicated video property, making NewTeeVee the named home for GigaOm's online-video coverage.
- Readers and sources covering internet video get a specialist outlet whose entire editorial identity is that one beat, instead of waiting for GigaOm to cover video among other topics.
Second-order effects
- Other independent tech blogs competing for online-video scoops and advertising now face a focused rival backed by GigaOm's existing traffic, pushing them toward their own vertical launches or deeper specialization.
- NewTeeVee adds a second branded surface for GigaOm to sell sponsorships against, extending the network's revenue model beyond a single site without new capital.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, solo-blogger sites become multi-property networks where brand extension into adjacent beats — not individual scoops — is the growth engine, prefiguring how indie tech media organizes itself.
- Dedicated verticals also concentrate expertise around fast-moving sectors like online video, raising reader expectations that coverage come from specialists rather than generalists.
The trend: Independent tech blogging is consolidating from single-author sites into multi-vertical blog networks, with each new property extending an existing brand rather than starting from scratch.