Om Malik

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

My name is Om. I grew up in Delhi, India. After attending university and starting off as a journalist in India, I became fascinated with technology and the emergence of the Internet. I eventually immigrated to the United States. Media was part of my worldview, and I knew very early on as a teenager that I wanted to be a writer. The rest of the journey is in pursuit of that one truth about myself. Since then, I have added “camera” to my tool belt — I try to write with my photos as well.

What's the story behind your blog?

Being so early to the network, it made me realize the importance of publishing to the new network. IT didn’t matter what tools you were using — people still get caught up in the whole idea of tools — when writing to the network (whether with words, visuals or voice) is the main thing.

I was writing on the internet even before we had blogs. I used to publish personal stuff on the web in a hardcoded (hand written) html and post it to my minuscule home page on Pipeline, a local ISP in North East United States. Eventually I joined Forbes.com, which was one of the earliest mainstream media outlets to establish a dedicated web team and website.

I used to have a newsletter - dotcomwala- that I would send to a few hundred people and I shared a lot of “news” I would pick up from my works as a reporter. It didn’t pass the rigor of a mainstream media website, so it was my lightweight take on news, even though I had confirmed it with a one or two people, just not three people a mainstream news outlets expected you to have. Eventually the newsletter gave way to a website - GigaOm — and in late 2001 it became pretty obvious that the idea of “technology magazines” covering technology on a weekly or monthly cadence was a dumb idea. Tech moved so fast, and the print world so slow.

I decided to basically turn my website into a blog — first with Blogger, then with Moveable Type, because it allowed me to have comments and community. In a way, my evolution as a writer happened as the network matured and gave us an opportunity to put the power of the network to work.

My initial focus was core technology— which is what I liked intuitively. It was always a bit more skewed in favor of startups, because I have always liked upstarts with long odds. We in tech at that time were all upstarts. Over the years I have become more explanatory in my writing and do more analysis than just plain news. That transition was a result of personal growth, more experience and ability to be very confident in being able to articulate myself without needing editors.

I would say my grounding in core technology and lessons learned as a Forbes reporter allow me to understand the downstream impacts of technology, and at the same time allowed me to think about the possibilities of what new chips, new photonic gear or new storage could make possible.

For me, blogging is my perfect form of writing and expression. As a reporter I respect the facts, and as an essayist I can make correlations. Blogging gives me the voice, the platform and freedom to be a tad casual, should the topic require so.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

My creative process is pretty uncreative really. I am constantly reporting. I am always reading. I am always making notes — either mentally or on paper. I keep a common place notebook — I take notes, write down thoughts and basically leave myself messages. I write with a 100 year old pen and ink made by a company that is almost 300 years old. There is something gratifying about the technology perfected in the past, allowing me to dream about the future.

I often get ideas for a blog post, and when that happens I start writing. I use my phone to draft a post. I use the phone to dictate a document. And then I run it through some kind of tool to check grammar. I use Lex for writing and editing — this is AI powered and smarter version of Google Docs. I use Sudowrite for my creative writing which I almost never share.

I have had editors and collaborators in the past, but now I use a lot of ai tools to fill out the procedural aspect of the writing and editing. I still have half-a-dozen people (including former editors) who I share my ideas and longer pieces to get second and often third opinion. I find that as I have grown older, I want to be more measured (and less bombastic) in my approach.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I am not too picky about where I work — I write in cafes, airports, planes, back seat of a cab, or I will just stop on the side of the road if the words come to me. During the pandemic I converted a spare room into my office, but it is mostly for my other creative practice — photos and photo editing. I have a Mac Studio with a big monitor for editing images. I occasionally use it for writing and zoom calls. But, when it comes to computers, I write on an iPad with a keyboard.

However, most of my writing including blog posts start in a notebook. I buy fountain pen friendly notebooks from Japan. I have a bunch of fountain pens, though my favorite is a 100-year old pen. It is too fragile to travel, so I have a couple of others, like a Lamy AiOn which takes cartridges and is made out of metal that I can taken when I have to travel overseas. I have a couple of others that are almost always in my bag — either with blue or another blue ink.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

This is fairly easy. I was on Moveable Type, but I was an early convert to open source, and was an early switcher to WordPress. I think I was in the initial batch of users even before they officially launched the alpha. I have been on WordPress since then. It is hosted on Pressable. It is fairly simple WP installation. I use some plugins, such as Postmark for my newsletter. There are some others for photo galleries and categories, but mostly whatever comes with WP and with the official Jetpack plugins.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

So, this is a tough question for me. When I started my blog, it was a personal blog. GigaOM, eventually became a company, and my personal blog ended its existence. A few years later, I started my current blog, On My Om (Om.co) to really revive all my non-professional writing, and musings since I couldn’t publish those on GigaOM, which had become a collaborative publication and was more polished than my casual scribbles. When GigaOM shutdown in 2015, I started publishing more “tech” related writing on Om.co, and since then I have been writing there.

The name, On My Om, is a reflection on the reality — this is just me, and no-one else writing. It is much more like my old blog, as it allows me to be quirky about things that I care about. I recently restructured the blog to reflect the new reality of my writing — for instance, I separated essay and interviews into their own categories. I have a daily blog. And I created two categories — one for my photography and one for my other obsessions such as fountain pens and inks.

As to using a different platform, I have toyed with the idea, but I don’t because I am so familiar with WordPress. Plus, I am friends with Matt Mullenweg and he does good tech support, when I run into a problem. No seriously, though I like what Ghost is doing. I think WP could learn a lot from them in how to seamlessly go between email publishing and blog publishing. On email front, I love what Buttondown.Email is doing. I highly recommend them over Substack or any other large entity because they are independent.

Financial question since the web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I don’t monetize my blog. I don’t look at stats. I don’t care about traffic. I don’t want to put any ads on my blog — and the reason is that through the luck of the draw and my good fortune, I have been able to make a decent living and can afford to spend a few hundred bucks a year on my blog. For me, Om.co is my homestead on the web, where people come to either get to know me better, learn about things I have learned about, or generally be part of my community. I am on the other end of the whole blog cycle. Almost like I have come a full circle. I had started Gigaom as a means of expression at that time, and then it became a business, and well, here I am again.

As for supporting others — I have subscriptions to about half a dozen newsletters (not tech), and a whole bunch of small and indie publications. I love supporting the small media, but don’t have time for establishment media outlets. I don’t much care for some of the larger blogs as well. And same goes for the larger YouTubers and podcasts. You need to catch them early — that’s when they really are pure and hustling to serve the reader.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I don’t know if I have a must read blog any more — there are many, that I love. If you were to twist my arm, I would say Arun Venkatesan has a low key blog at Arun.is. I like his “design” centric approach and intentionality. I also love Last Word On Nothing, a really great group blog by bunch of science writers. It is fantastic.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Well, this is a good one. I love a photography-focused podcast, Photo Work. I am also in love with The Slowdown Podcast. I highly recommend using Readwise as a replacement for Pocket. It is very good. And my current favorite desktop tool is MacWhisper — it is basically transcription on the desktop and not having to share all your audio with others. I love creating voice memos and using it to transcribe, and then ideating with it on Lex or one of the other AI-enhanced editing tools.