Technology web site Gigaom has closed down, after saying it had run out of cash.
Gigaom was started by our old friend Om Malik and had around six and a half million pages views a month.
But advertising revenue for small sites is at an all time low, following the disintermediation of adverts for the web.
Tom Foremski, from Silicon Valley Watcher, said that one of the biggest problems of the internet is that there is no value attached to good quality media content.
He said: “We still have no satisfactory business model that can save the media industry from the disruptive economic forces of the web, that continue to hound its shrinking news rooms and dwindling pools of exhausted professionals.”
Part of the problem, Foremski said, is that a shift to accessing the web via mobile phones means it’s almost impossible to make money from adverts.
He said it’s likely that it’s nearly impossible to make a living as an independent publisher because unless your web views are sky high, the return on adverts is tiny.
