One of the times we met, we were at a restaurant with Salman Rushdie. We sat on either side. The room was small and dark, and kinda cramped. Rushdie was freaked out and paranoid, constantly looking around as if he was being stalked, possibly killed at any minute. We were both excited to meet him, but the meeting didn’t last long; once his wife arrived, Rushdie was out of there pretty quickly. I remember this moment afterwards where Om and I looked at each with a big smile and raised eyebrows in sorta of a mutual, unspoken sigh of relief that we weren’t going to end up as collateral damage.
Om Malik was one of the very first influential bloggers. Day-to-day he led packs of others on Blogdex and Technorati, and then Techmeme, due to authority he earned with his style and the truth. Om represented Web 2.0, an era of organic, authentic information spread, before the silos emerged and the algorithms became corrupt. In the same way the founders of America built a constitutional framework, Om was one of a small group of founders of blogging, setting standards for a new style of independent, personal news publishing on the internet. It was the era that text became truly democratized, circa 2001, the year the internet in America made its way into 50% of American homes, that same year Om began writing GigaOm. Enter into his work here.