6 ms·
CNN to buy Mashable for $200 million +
- simondlr 15y agoHas anyone felt Mashable sort of deteriorated the past few months?
- wyclif 15y agoI was never very impressed by Mashable. Far too much linkbait.
- joelhaasnoot 15y agoFar too many "100 ways to" or "Be sure not to miss" and then their "tips" being rehashing of other people's work or thigns I could've thought of myself too, especially with a little Google work.
- Uchikoma 15y agoSeems to work to sell for $200M :-)
- joering2 15y agoNo. Rather seems to be a _part_ of work that got them to sell for $200MM. Mashable has executives with very deep connections. I say this was more important.
- wyclif 15y agoMashable is essentially a low-quality content farm. Certainly no place for a self-respecting geek to get tech news.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- amac 15y agoMashable represents what media has become; popularist, global and free. This is largely driven by us believe it or not, with help from the Internet off course.
- gjulianm 15y agoWithout the "sort of". Mashable has deteriorated noticeably the past few months. It was a pretty interesting blog about social networks. Now it's a pageview machine. The best example of this happened when Bin Laden was killed [1]. I deleted it from my Google Reader months ago, there were a lot of articles daily and few of them were somewhat interesting.
- MattBearman 15y agoI pretty much stopped reading Mashable when I discovered HN. I probably haven't been on Mashable at all in the last 6 months, as the last I did there was absolutely nothing of value that I hadn't already seen elsewhere.
- ashconway 15y agoI've moved away from sourcing news through multiple news apps like mashable to consuming all my tech news via a news aggregation app called pulse.
- suking 15y agoI feel like Business Insider is doing the same crap. Top 10 XYZ regurgitated 10 ways and split testing headlines to get more pageviews. No quality whatsoever.
- dotcoma 15y agoHow clueless can CNN be?
- jgroome 15y agoForgive me if I sound ignorant, but... How in the name of everlasting gods can Mashable of all things be worth $200,000,000?
- kloncks 15y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I
- gjulianm 15y agoI don't know about the stats of Mashable, but I'm pretty sure it's driving a lot of pageviews during the past months. CNN is probably taking that into account, not the quality of their articles.
- citricsquid 15y agoThat's about $10 per unique visitor if they're paying for traffic... if CNN are buying it for page views they're... stupid.
- bh42222 15y agoI think it shows how much cash traditional media is capable of generating compared to Internet based media. I think this should mean more and more ads should move from the more expensive media to the cheaper alternative, in theory.
- ticks 15y agoIt's a such a crazy price, but we have seen similar purchases of blogs like TC recently. Normally, websites are sold on the basis of a year or two worth of revenue - I am talking content websites, rather than services. There's no way that Mashable is making anything near $100 mill per year.
- mcantelon 15y agoOld media generally has more money than brains. They are used to command-and-control and think if they just buy new media hotness they'll then be able to grab the steering wheel and drive into the future. The reality is their impulse to control usually makes failure inevitable.
- kloncks 15y agoMakes the $25,000,000 AOL spent on TechCrunch seem so paltry.
- bvi 15y agoI'm shocked that Mashable is perceived to be 8x the value TechCrunch was, when it was acquired by AOL. Either TechCrunch was low-balled, or Mashable's value is over-inflated. I suspect the latter...
- rzbn 15y agoWell tech crunch is much more focused on startup and tech. Mashable has lately turned into Hoffington Post. They cover everything from startups to world news and politics
- brianbreslin 15y agoMashable has a wider audience, less niche (startups are not mainstream yet). Mashable also has a higher traffic rate. Pete Cashmore knows what he's doing.
- darwinGod 15y ago'Cashmore' -I honestly for a second thought it was a pun on the founder's name,till I googled him. Extremely impressive exit for a 26 year old guy!
- joering2 15y agoI suspect both.
- geuis 15y agoI really love things like this. Its old media trying to get in the game on "new" media. It only benefits their eventual demise. There's several things happening here: 1) The founders of Mashable, and their stockholders, are earning out on what they've built. That's a good thing, and well deserved. 2) Its really Turner Broadcasting that's doing the buying here. Its an old media company again demonstrating that they are unable, or unwilling, to modernize. They are throwing money at a problem rather than innovating. 3) Such a large amount of money flowing from old media into the technology sector works to hasten the demise of companies like CNN/Turner Broadcasting. It drains their coffers a bit more, while providing new cash flow to the founders and employees in Mashable and frees them up to pursue new innovative ventures over the next few years. pg really saw something important when he added RFS 9 - Kill Hollywood to the Request for Startups at Ycombinator. While CNN is a "news" company and not directly part of Hollywood, they are most certainly tied at the hip to the same people that run Hollywood. So in that aspect, this is a very good thing.
- securitytheater 15y agoWhat if they bought HN? Then throwing money at the problem would probably be a good thing for them.
- geuis 15y agoHow do you "buy" HN? HN is a community-driven site and long-running experiment. I suppose YC could sell the domain name, but the community would just evaporate and move elsewhere over night.
- kmfrk 15y agoLike Conde Nast bought reddit?
- freehunter 15y agoAnd saw no return, put next to no effort into improvements, and later spun them back into the wild. And in the meantime, reddit's community was completely unaffected by the changing of hands.
- jacquesm 15y agoThey're about 20 days early with this announcement. This is like seeing a re-run of the broadcast.com sale.
- majani 15y agoThe main takeaway here(if true) is about branding. There is hardly any proprietary software any more these days, it's been largely commoditised. In this situation, the wise words of Warren Buffet ring true. He said that the best investment is one where you take a commodity, brand it, then sell it. So make great software, brand it and sell it.
- instakill 15y agoI'd like you to extrapolate on the software commodity quote.
- ChrisArchitect 15y agoIf true, that value is off the chart crazy but makes this also amazing. Pete Cashmore has definitely put the time in.... but as many of us know has been crazy with the linkbait drivel for like the past year or more. He must be in a surreal state of bliss about all this.
- kmfrk 15y agoI'm sad to see a site like Mashable get rewarded for their crap, but if this contributes to their eventual demise, I guess I don't mind that much.
- joering2 15y agoI +1 you. This is sad indeed. Imagine all those wannabees setting up websites with minimum content, couple bloggers, plastered all around with ads. on the other hand - does anyone know Mashable's profits?
- spacestation 15y ago"surely, you must be kidding?" must be a typo. 20 million, right.
- AznHisoka 15y agoI agree with others that Mashable is deteriorating in quality. However the bulk of their visitors, I bet don't come from "devoted" followers, but rather from search engines, I would venture around 75-80%. They're like a content farm disguised as a quality blog network. They put out 10-20 pages a day, for 4-5 years, and each page gets like what? 20 links, 20 likes, 20 +1's? That all adds up to high search engine rankings. At this point it doesn't matter if Mashable jumps the shark - they can just keep on putting on mediocre content, and it'll still rank based on their brand and authority. I don't know if CNN knows that's what they're buying - they probably think Mashable has lots of "fans". They do, but it's not that valuable.. definitely not 200 million valuable. If Google gave them a site-wide penalty, their traffic would plummet overnight.
- jcc80 15y agoSo far the comments seem to be negative. Just want to say congrats to Pete Cashmore. I don't know him and don't really read Mashable. But, I'm sure him and his team have put years of their lives into making Mashable a success. When he first started, I bet he never imagined a day like this would come. He made it happen. Good for him.
- blackysky 15y agofirst congrats to Pete Cashmore and his team... now let's be honest here CNN is buying the traffic ...hate it or love it Mashable is driving a lot of traffic with their "spammy tactics"..CNN don't really care about the quality because they can add their own staff later...However $200M is a huge price tag ...is it as valuable as the huffington post? what's going on here...is it a race for page views with cheap content...news media is dying....
- Achshar 15y agoWell i have to say this was totally out of the blues for me and 200m is still an over valuation IMO. esp considering that is the value of page views. but congrats to Pete and team!
- spinchange 15y agoI remember when Mashable was on a blogger account and Pete was running it out of his parents basement. Well done, Pete and team.
- webwanderings 15y agoFinally, both TechCrunch and Mashable are dead!
- funkah 15y agoSure, they're dead. In the same way that NeXT is dead.
- fpp 15y agoArticle was updated: "...the NYT has three sources telling them that there are indeed ‘advanced talks’ being held about a potential acquisition of Mashable by CNN, but that a deal could still fall through..."
- shingen 15y agoThe word is: boondoggle
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- itsprofitbaron 15y agoHaving read a few comments regarding the valuation of Mashable at the $200MM range, I've decided to post my 2 cents here. Personally, I think the valuation for Mashable is achievable when we consider Mashable as similar to HuffingtonPost rather than TechCrunch - Mashable is no longer a tech/startup blog. HuffingtonPost which was acquired for $315MM which was 10x its 2010 revenue and it is this exit, which I believe turned Pete's head and meant he's seeking an exit. Whilst, I don't know Pete personally to confirm if this is true but from what I am hearing this seems to be the case. I may be completely wrong but, I doubt it as Mashable has been expanding its verticals & focusing on them more since, the HuffingtonPost acquisition to become more like them rather than TechCrunch etc. Bringing TechCrunch back into the mix and you consider they are on course to do $10-15MM this year & you consider the fact that Mashable hosts similar events AND has more pageviews/visitors than TechCrunch then $20MM seems plausible. Remember, Mashable virtually doubled its revenue in 2010 or 2011 just by focusing on selling its advertisements itself rather than through ad networks. Additionally, Mashable also offered some of their top writers retainer bonuses in order to stay and prevent the turnover they were experiencing and to stop it putting off potential buyers - some writers/editors were offered up to $200-300k to remain at Mashable from what I have heard as a cash bonus on top of their normal salary As I highlighted earlier with regards to the expansion of Mashable, Ulanoff was brought to expand Mashable into general news which again proves my theory as highlighted by the launch of World and Entertainment News. Likewise, I have been told that pageviews have also become the main metric for success at Mashable. This is over unique visitors and their writers have been told to insert a gallery where possible to increase and generate additional pageviews (For instance, if you go on Mashable yourself you can see that they have more of the BusinessInsider feel with Slideshows). With all these things considered, I think that Mashable can easily be worth around the $150-200 Million mark especially when you consider the HuffingtonPost acquisition price.
- sad_panda 15y ago$200 million? ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL