Om Malik is a blogger and founder of Giga Omni Media Inc. He is the editor-in-chief of GigaOM and produces a weekly video show called The GigaOm Show. Om Malik was born in New Delhi. He graduated from St. Stephens’ College in New Delhi in 1986, with an honors degree in chemistry. Om Malik moved to New York City in 1993 to be a writer for India Abroad and then for Forbes where he became a senior writer.
Q: When and why did you start blogging? Was it out of curiosity or something else?
A: Blogging in the current form, it was in December 2001. Essentially we started the blog to complement my book Broadbandits.
Q: What topics do you generally blog about?
A: Anything and everything which is technology related. I don’t write about legacy technologies, PC, database and ERP. What I write about is broadband, wireless broadband technologies. We also write about Web 2.0, impact of Web 2.0 on corporations, impact of social networking and social media on the world at large. We create content akin to what economists do but we are not as good as the economists. I am not making that statement. But that is the goal we aspire to, analytical and strategic focus for high end user!
Q: Do you ever get stuck when writing an entry? What do you do then?
A: I take a walk. Seriously! I am not joking. If I Can’t think of anything, I shut the computer take a walk and then come back.
Q: Which tools/plugins do you use to efficiently manage your blog? Any widgets or tips you would like to share with our readers.
A: None. I use WordPress.com and that is it and I write on Textpad or text edit, I use them to write my notes and then post it on the blog
Q: What promotional techniques work best for you and why?
A: I don’t know, I write posts which I like and I don’t care about promotional techniques. I seriously don’t. My belief is that, if I write a good article then people will come and read it and promotion will happen.
Q: How important is it for the blogger to interact with their readers? Do you respond to all the comments that you receive?
A: We get close to 4000 comments across the network. I try to answer in most of the posts which I write and respond at least once in every three hours. I can’t keep up , I mean I am physically not able to keep up! but yes I make the effort to do it. I have subscribed to comments feeds and blogs and they come into a different subscription and if any of them merits a response, I go across and respond them!
Q: How, in general, would you rate the quality of Indian blogs? Share your favorite five blogs.
A: I read Priyanka’s blog occasionally ‘Twilightfairy’, Amit’s blog but I don’t think it is an Indian blog by any means, he just happens to live in India, Rajesh Jain’s Blog. I used to read a couple of VC’s Blog but I stopped doing that as it became too much for me!
Q: What do you find to be the most gratifying aspect of blogging?
A: Learning from my readers, learning from my community. I Think that is very gratifying. Occasionally I just have to write a post saying ‘ Hey I am trying to figure out how this thing works?’ and within 15 minutes I get people saying what I should do. How great is that! It is so interactive. This thing is very alive, Blogging and twitter are very organic. They are like living things like this is not dead meat. It is a live medium. People respond to you and interacting with you. I can go to any country and I find that at least one guy has read my blog. Isn’t that cool. For me that is a Big thing
Q: What is your advice to someone who wants to start a blog?
A: Just do it! Try it, if it doesn’t work don’t do it! If you like it keep writing! You need to write for you and not for other people. If you do that, people start relating to you!
Q: What is your take on twitter?
A: I am active, I love twitter. A part of being a blogger is to have a community and if my community wants to follow me on twitter, I will go to them as simple as that. I am the servant of my readers, if they say I want to read this, I will have to do it, they are aggregating on twitter so I will go there!
Thank you Sir for taking the time out for the interview during the WordCamp. It was a pleasure meeting you and knowing more about you.
- Om Malik’s Blog
- http://www.twitter.com/om is Om Malik’s Twitter handle.
- http://www.twitter.com/gigaomis GigaOm’s Twitter handle
Nice interview.
Can anyone leave the present job, or take up blogging alone for a living?
Is it possible, unless they have some decent media contacts?
Why not? I know a friend of mine who left Google and started his own venture, in span of 1 year, he is making what he used to make when he was with Google and this is all without any much contacts in industry. He believed in himself and he did what he had dreamt about the outlook in life.
It is very helpful for my blogging to read such a experienced person,
Why not? Well if you want to blog for an issue, then you may! Otherwise, I think blogging 2-3 hours a day with an 8 hrs a day job is manageable.
Until and unless of course you want to do something like Darren Rowe of problogger.net.
I started my blog to promote my website which is Om Shaadi Om Org. Its a no profit endeavour and I have been successful in getting 200 to 300 visitors daily to my site through my blog.
Also, blogging helps me interact with the audience, as I am able to explain to them that how my site is free and still better than paid matrimonial websites.
Even my tutorial videos did not convince the audience into joining as my blog did.
I stumbled on this article because of the name Om that matches my sties name too.
All similarities are purely coincidental…;-)
Cheers.