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Discovery Communications Sells HowStuffWorks.com
- smackfu 13y agoWow, $250 million in 2007.
- antr 13y agoDiscovery has had HSW for 6-7 years in their portfolio. I'm curious to know the dividends they've gotten out from this company - it seems to me that this type of property was a cash cow. $250m might seem high, but exit price + dividends can tell a different (positive) story.
- whoismua 13y agoGoogle is killing more and more companies. for Google to continue their artificial growth of 20+%, they need to send less people to other sites and more to YouTube, G+...hoping they click on ads. Google is eating its tail
- billmalarky 13y agoNot if they continue to expand non-web related businesses (automated cars).
- dchuk 13y ago95% of Google's revenue comes from ads, and they're probably at least 5 years away from drawing revenue from their auto/robot projects.
- billmalarky 13y agoAre you suggesting that a company can't have current valuation based on speculated future returns?
- whoismua 13y agoThat makes for some great PR but that's about it. Ironically, the first casualty of lower earnings growth will be the side projects. Voting shares or not, shareholder holding $300 Billion will vote at least by selling some and that hurts employees, hiring and everything. Google is probably a decade from making money with its automated cars--if they are even any better than manufacturer's own system (everyone is working on it.) Will they spend $10 Billion or whatever it takes to build their own cars? License it? For how much and will they make a profit on it?
- ToastyMallows 13y agoI hope Josh and Chuck's Stuff You Should Know podcast continues. I've listened to it for many years now. Does anyone have any information about it?
- mhurron 13y agoHopefully in general it simply becomes howstuffcontinuestowork. There is some neat stuff there, it would be a shame to lose it.
- teepo 13y agoMe too. It's a great podcast. I never check out the website though, despite the pleadings from Josh and Chuck. I recall recently they were encouraging listeners to play the podcasts directly from the website, that the website has been revamped, etc.
- ProAm 13y agoOne of my favorite podcasts. I'm sure this will continue in one form or another, or at least I hope.
- chewmieser 13y agoI wonder how this will effect their podcasts (e.g. Stuff you Should Know). Will they remain HowStuffWorks properties or will Discovery fully embrace them (they claim ownership by both companies at the moment).
- nathanvanfleet 13y agoI really enjoyed HowStuffWorks back in the day. But it kind of failed to keep up. Discovery wanted to use it to extend their pseudo-educational, but actually entertainment, brand. I think that HSW would have been better suited to work towards education and not towards entertainment.
- michaelt 13y agoYeah, if you look at the type of content they were putting out in 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20030404162012/http://auto.howstuffworks.com/four-wheel-drive1.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20030404162012/http://auto.howst... and the type of content they're putting out in 2014: http://www.howstuffworks.com/ http://www.howstuffworks.com/ Pretty stark difference.
- silverbax88 13y agoWow, yeah that's a good find for juxtaposition. 2003: "How 4 Wheel Drive Works"...2014: "World's Most Beautiful Skylines"
- shrikant 13y agoI was going to complain that you aren't being entirely fair by comparing an article page to the main landing page, then I saw the actual article page as it stands currently. http://www.howstuffworks.com/four-wheel-drive.htm http://www.howstuffworks.com/four-wheel-drive.htm What. A. Mess. The pagination above and below the article content is mismatched, the helpful "table of contents" style pagination is replaced with useless numbers that only display the section title on hover (which I discovered only by accident), and there's just SO much more distracting visual cruft. And as an added bonus, the "More stuff to explore" section highlights Buzzfeed/Upworthy-style article like "10 People You Probably Didn't Know Were Black", and "5 Ways to Prevent Wrinkles". The latter is veering into Cosmo territory...
- forrestthewoods 13y agoOh god. I had no idea it turned into clickbait bullshit :( "10 Trade Secrets We Wish We Knew" "10 Most Stressful Jobs in America" "Who is the most famous person of all time?" "10 Science Questions You Should Really Know How to Answer" "10 Bizarre Ways to Die" "Is there a real way to lose belly fat?"
- joshdance 13y agoI used to love HowStuffWorks but their quality went way down. It became mostly ads, and 7 pages to click thru that should have been just one.
- throwawaymsft 13y agoAgreed, it used to be inspiring for me as a student, and now has become such an embarrassment. "10 Sneaky Ways Technology Betrays Cheating Cheaters" is the most popular article.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- troymc 13y agoMany years ago, HowStuffWorks was making amazing, in-depth technical explanation articles, but I think Wikipedia has won that game (and it links to more in-depth references if you want them). The HowStuffWorks podcasts are pretty good. Maybe the new owner will let them go and they'll land safely at places like NPR, TWIT, or 5by5 (or even Revision3 heh).