SOFTBANK INVESTS $11M IN OHMYNEWS

HatTip to alarm:clock. My old investor, Softbank, invested in OhmyNews.

Among other things, OhmyNews will spend the invested funds on the expansion of OhmyTV, an Internet television arm of OhmyNews, to advance citizen participation in video journalism and the development of OhmyNews' English language edition. Softbank will own 12.95% of OhmyNews' outstanding shares as a result of this investment.

If the site becomes a success, it will refute statements made by Dan Gillmor, whose failed Bayosphere ventures competes with OhMyNews.

A minor point, but I don't agree with alarm:clock's assessment that OhmyNews' success will refute Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere project. OhmyNews served as an inspiration to Gillmor's efforts and the first citizen journalism success story in the world. I wrote about this last summer, but the environment in South Korea was more conducive to citizen journalism due to the late and underdevelopment of blogging over there. The U.S. has so many individual bloggers along with the exponential growth of the blogosphere that most citizen journalism efforts will fail. I believe a successful effort in the U.S. will come from an established media player that decides to embrace the qualities of the blogosphere.