The world lost a great man yesterday. Om Malik’s family posted that he passed away on June 24, 2026. We lost a master at connecting the dots, seeing the patterns – and then telling the stories. He was only 59 (1 year older than me!).
This blog, Disruptive Telephony, owes its existence to Om and the pack of others that were active back in the early and mid-2000s. This whole “blogging” thing was new. And “voice-over-IP”, a.k.a. “VoIP” was new. Skype was disrupting telephony and blogging was disrupting online publishing. As I wrote back in 2016 celebrating 10 years of writing on this site:
In 2006, the “VoIP blogging” world was quite small – and we all pretty much knew other. Om Malik was writing on his own site (it was yet to become GigaOm). Andy Abramson had VoIPWatch. Jeff Pulver was writing on his sites. Tom Keating at his “VoIP and Gadgets blog” on TMC. Martin Geddes had his “Telepocalypse” site. Alec Saunders had “Saunderslog”. And there were a few others…
This was back in the day when we read each others blog posts, commented on them, excerpted each other’s posts, etc. And “social media” was not yet a big thing.
… and there were more… Phil Wolff, Stuart Henshall, Jim Courtney, Rich Tehrani, Eric Lagerway, Dameon Welch-Abernathy (PhoneBoy), Jon Arnold, Irwin Lazar, Carolyn Schuk, Ken Camp, Aswath Rao, Luca Filigheddu…
There was a whole group of us trying to figure out where telecommunications was going when it could work so well over the global Internet – and we were using this new world of blogging to share what we found.
It was amazing time to be exploring several new mediums as the Internet continued to evolve.
The Best Of Us
But while we all wrote as we did.. the best of us was Om Malik.
He was out there putting the pieces together and sharing that. And we would so often build upon the foundations he was laying out for us. I found a May 2008 post of his, “Global Telcos Plotting a Skype Rival?” which a group of us then debated on a “Squawk Box” podcast the next day.
Day after day after day… he was out there writing and writing. Showing us the patterns of what lay ahead. Celebrating the innovators and the people trying new things.
I only met Om in person a couple of times. Once was O’Reilly’s 2007 Emerging Telephony (ETel) conference in San Francisco – the archive of the agenda contains so many names and memories. And there was Om in the middle of it leading the Launch Pad for new companies.
And as communications moved from VoIP into social channels, there was Om… writing about Twitter and explaining why needed to care. He was always looking at the horizon.
After my work life moved in other directions, I didn’t really stay in touch. It has been many years since I’d corresponded.
But I never stopped following his writing… and sharing his insights with those around us. His “On my Om” newsletter was one of the ones I always stopped to read.
And Yet He Kept Writing…
Long after many of the names I wrote above stopped writing… or slowed our pace… or shifted to writing about other topics… Om was still there.
His form and format changed over the years… but… he… just… kept… on… writing!
Just recently he had jumped back into writing VERY deeply… and wrote some amazing pieces about how AI is changing the Internet. If you have not read his brilliant – and long – piece in May on “Say Hello to the Internet of AI“… GO READ IT! Now! (Or… at least queue it up to read some time when you can spend the time that the piece needs. I re-read it a couple of times.)
He followed that with “AI is the New Netflix” where he looked at how upload needs are changing because of AI. And then on May 29 he dove deep into the numbers in the AI bubble.
I’d shared these pieces with some Internet Society colleagues.. and I’ve had it in my task list to reach out to Om to see if he would join a call with some of us to talk about this work. I was planning to reach out to him in July. 😢 I have a potential trip to San Francisco in November, where I was hoping to meet up and record a podcast episode with him. But I had not yet reached out.
He Will Be Missed
Om’s writing wasn’t only about the latest tech. He also wrote about the need to think about our life. One of his recent pieces was about a YouTube farmer who was stopping his videos. Om wrote:
We often worry about what’s next instead of being okay with not knowing. Let whatever is next come to you. In time you will know the answer. And that’s all you can hope for.
And he wrote (with my modification):
These creators become a quiet, steady presence in your life.
PeteOm wasn’t just content. He was a rhythm. A place you went. <snip>When that disappears, you lose a small refuge. Worth a moment of sadness.
Worth a moment of sadness, indeed.
R.I.P. Om.. thank you for all you shared.
Image Credit: Om’s newsletter