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Although we at GigaOM are well aware that we’re part of the next generation of media, much of what we do and how we do it is governed by some of the most basic rules of traditional journalism, a profession whose ethics and mission we hold very dear to our hearts. So we were especially honored to learn that when presented with 10 of the top technology blogs on the web, tech reporters ranked GigaOM as the most credible one.

PR firm Brodeur, a division of Ominicom, teamed up with Marketwire to find out how beat reporters viewed the influence of social media on traditional news delivery; the survey also asked the reporters to rank blogs and other social media sites. From the survey:

Tech reporters ranked Engadget, Gizmodo, and Boing Boing as by far the most popular among the top 10 tested. But when it comes to credibility of content, journalists rated Arstechnica and GigaOm, along with Engadget, the top three sites. GigaOm scored the highest with 45% saying its content was “very credible.”

We have you to thank for this. Our community hold us to an incredibly high standard; if we’re doing something wrong, you are the first ones to tell us. And it is this evolution of media to which we are most dedicated — the ability to continue the conversation with those whose opinions matter to us the most: our readers.

Of course, we are always looking for good writers. If you’re interested in contributing to the site, drop me a line at carolyn at gigaom dot com.

Executives at Time Warner concerned with how to spin out its Time Warner Cable division seem to believe that saddling a cash-generating business in an increasingly competitive market with a lot of debt is good. It’s good for Time Warner Cable shareholders (including Time Warner), who will get a $10.27 per share dividend, but it’s kind of like penalizing a wage-earning kid by charging him a giant fee before he leaves the nest. However, it should help the parent company placate shareholders and shore up reserves while it figures out what the heck it’s doing on the content side.

Moblyng, which was formerly known as Fliptrack, just raised $5.7 million to translate Flash content from the Web into videos or stills that can be viewed on most cell phones. As a transcoding junkie, I thought this was cool — until I realized that the company will use its translation prowess to allow you to scrape your “photo bling” from MySpace, Friendster and Facebook (only via the Moblyng Mobile slide show Facebook app) and render it fit for viewing on a WAP page on a cell phone.

This seemed silly to me. And then I realized I am old and hopelessly outdated.

As CEO Stewart Putney said, this way someone can post a video or photos and share them with everyone at the same time. This fits with my ever-present wish to upload content once and share with everyone. I just don’t see many of my recipients being so jazzed about my photos that they need to flip open their mobile to see them RIGHT NOW. But if they are, using Moblyng they can.

Putney also said that after the beta Moblyng might expand the technology beyond social sites, and possibly to devices such as televisions. That fits with another of my technological dreams — seamless content transfer across all three screens. I suppose shopping on Etsy via my mobile will just have to wait.

Three years ago, when Google launched Google Maps for free, the whole world was agog with what you could find. One man who wasn’t thrilled: Jaron Waldman, founder of Los Angeles-based startup Placebase. He was contemplating starting a white-label mapping business when Google went and made the value proposition of his idea disappear. After all, it’s hard to compete with free. Or so you would think.

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Love it or hate it, Twitter, a service that embodies our narcissism, is one that we can’t stop talking about. Even though it’s still a tool of the tech-elite, the San Francisco-based startup that came out of Ev Williams’ Odeo has become a favorite among the chattering classes. That buzz is turning into a bidding frenzy for the company’s next round of venture funding. Multiple sources got in touch about Twitter and its next round — I guess I heard it enough times that I decided to stay up late and write about it.

While it has been reported on a few occasions that the company has raised between $15 million and $20 million, that doesn’t seem to be the case, though it seems to be close to deciding, I am told. There are at least two VC funds duking it out, with Twitter’s valuation pegged at way north of $70 million. In 2007, the company raised $5 million from Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures. Valleywag had earlier mentioned Spark Capital as a potential investor and pegged the valuation at $60 million. The news was first reported by Silicon Alley Insider. Looks like that was so…last week!

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Widgets, Facebook Applications, OpenSocial Web 2.0 gee gaws - you got one of those, well you can get funded. And when I say funded, I mean really funded, even though many of these companies are still struggling to find a business model. This lack of a business model at a time when social media advertising is taking a bit of a nose dive, makes me wonder what the investors are thinking.

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When it comes to the operations of Internet businesses, 99.999 percent uptime, or five nines, is one of the critical metrics of reliability. Yet that metric — essentially the ability to say that users will reliably be able to reach a business’ web site 99.999 percent of the time — still eludes nearly every of them. Continue »