VentureBeat

Om Malik’s online news empire GigaOM continues to grow with the launch of OStatic, a blog focusing on open source software.

There’s already a huge community of people interested in open source (software whose source code is freely available, allowing for easy adoption and modification) and plenty of sites devoted to the topic, including code repository SourceForge and user-generated news site Slashdot. What’s missing, however, is a traditional news blog, a VentureBeat or a GigaOM for open source.

This kind of software has growing for a while, and is now available for virtually an application you can think of. Malik says he knew it was time for a specialized blog after he saw that big players were entering the field. Earlier this year, for example, Sun acquired mySQL (our coverage), and even Microsoft — widely perceived as the epitome of “closed” software development — has made some nods towards greater openness (we were skeptical). You’ll recall that Malik’s reporting/blogging approach was a big inspiration for my boss, VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall, and Malik says he’s just following an old reporter’s maxim: Follow the money.

For now, OStatic posts will be written by contributors to other GigaOM sites — including Malik himself — and some new freelancers. If all goes well, Malik says he’ll hire full-time OStatic writers in the next month or so. And, as is only fitting given the topic, OStatic is offering more opportunities for reader involvement than other GigaOM sites. Malik says his staff has already created the bare bones of a wiki-style database of open source applications (see screenshot above), and they’re hoping users will start contributing immediately. Readers will also be able to ask questions about different open-source applications, and about which might be best for a specific task.

OStatic is pretty close to a sure thing, with the combination of GigaOM’s reputation and the built-in open source audience. The site’s real competition will probably be news sources like, well, VentureBeat, which cover open source developments without focusing on them exclusively. Our team, at least, fully intends to give OStatic a run for its money.

Even before the new launch, Malik has really led the way in creating a tech news network — rather than centralized news sources like this one or TechCrunch — with specialized blogs Earth2Tech, FoundReach, NewTeeVee and WebWorkerDaily. Diversifying makes sense, he says, because it allows each blog to develop its own “ecosystem”, and prevents any single site from being cluttered by an avalanche of posts. (We here at VentureBeat prefer to think of it as an abundance of riches, but Malik’s got a point.)

“This is micro-publishing, so a one-size-fit-all blog won’t do it,” he says. “This is a problem traditional media are having.”

GigaOm, a popular Silicon Valley technology blog network, has raised another round of funding from True Ventures, with angel investors participating.

Founder Om Malik says the money will be used to build out the editorial operation as well as hosting more events. For example, GigaOm blog NewTeeVee, which covers the online video market, will do a repeat next year of the industry conference it hosted yesterday.

The angel investors include Rakesh Mathur, Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, who have experience developing contextual content discovery software. GigaOm is looking to incorporate that type of technology, Malik writes, saying he is saving the details for later.

Besides the eponymously-named flagship blog GigaOm and NewTeeVee, the network also includes WebWorkerDaily, FoundRead and Earth2Tech.

There were some reports that GigaOm raised $1 million in this round, but Malik says that it was more than that. The company previously raised several hundred thousand dollars.

Here’s the latest action:

Veoh Networks files preemptive suit against Universal Music Group — Veoh, the San Diego video start-up we’ve written about, said it filed the suit to assert its rights as a copyright-compliant company after UMG threatened it with litigation.

Geni gets cloned by a German Verwandt, but there’s also Israeli MyHeritage — Verwandt, the German copycat of the family tree social network company Geni, told us last month it had raised financing from Neuhaus Partners, and had broken into the top 500 sites in Germany according to Alexa, with more than 200,000 profiles in three weeks (was it spamming people?). Verwandt’s only real difference from Geni, however, is that it offers comic avatars, so we didn’t bother looking too closely. However, now there’s also Israel’s MyHeritage, which has just raised funding from Accel Europe. The company reportedly has at least $3 million and maybe more (checking). These sites are coming out of the woodwork and remarkably, all getting funding.

MySpace barely making any profit — News Corp.’s Fox Interactive unit, which consists mainly of MySpace, turned a profit of $10 million on revenue of $550 million during the last fiscal year. With MySpace doing 4.3 billion page views a day, it means the company is making a mere fraction of a cent on each page view — just the latest sign that social networks are in the early days of trying to monetize with ads.

Nirvanix to launch content delivery network — The San Diego, Calif. company aims to compete with Amazon’s popular S3 storage web service. In a statement, it said it plans to offer delivery of rich media and streaming content for web developers, and is designed to be “the backbone for social networking and web 2.0 companies.” It also plans to announce in September that it has raised venture capital, though the news has already leaked (funding is reportedly $12 million).

Google showing bias for sites that use Google Checkout — Google is using its clout to boost the ranking of sites that use its Google Checkout service, penalizing those that rely on eBay’s PayPal, according to this account. [Update: Google has responded: "It's common practice to include descriptive links in blog copy, and we added the link in question for that reason," a Google spokespersons said. "This was an editorial decision, and it was made independently by Google."]

Segway Enthusiasts Club of America disbands — The hyped gyroscope-laden scooter, the Segway, apparently is losing its fan base.

Blog network GigaOm has brought on a business person and a professional managing editor — Details here.

Internet music radios — Companies like Roku, Com One, Revo, Terratec and Tivoli have all produced tabletop or bookshelf radios that are “freaky hybrids” of the old radio and the new Internet. The New York Times’ Pogue has a review. You tune into radio shows just as you have for decades, but the radios’ antennas are internal Wi-Fi receivers that connect to a wireless home networks.

Xconomy, business technology new site focused on Boston area, raises undisclosed amount of funding — Founder Bob Buderi tells us the round was led by CommonAngels. Here’s his post about it. Robert Buderi is former editor-in-chief of MIT’s Technology Review. Steve Woit, publisher, is a partner at IDG Ventures in Boston.

The Universal Music Group acquires a stake in the operator of the urban social networking Web site, Loud.com — Details here.

Color-coding on Wikipedia edits — Wikipedia is about to test a quality-control technique: Coloring a new edit red, in order to flag potentially dubious content, especially if the editor is new or otherwise untrusted. As the editor gains a reputation, the marking color will change and become less red. There’s a test site here, and a visual example here. More details about the experiment here. It will first be tested on a related, smaller site, Wikia.

Ooma offers pre-sale orders of its Hub and Scout telecom products — Ooma says demand for its products, which allow free land-line phone calls, was sufficient to open orders for sales earlier than planned. We reviewed the home telecom product here.