
Mashable to Sell to Ziff Davis - Mrtierne
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/16/mashable-reportedly-selling-to-ziff-davis-for-about-50-million/
======
nikcub
Comparisons:

Mashable: $46M raised[0], 15M MAU[1] and $35-40M p.a in revenue[2] (sold for
$50M)

Business Insider: $55M raised, 76M MAU, $50M+ rev (sold at $442M[5])

Refinery29: $125M raised, 27M MAU, $100M+ rev

Vox: $307M raised[4], 170M MAU, $100M+ rev

Buzzfeed: $496M raised, 200M+ MAU, $280-300M rev (was $350M - updated thanks)

HuffPo: $37M raised, 126M MAU, $30M+ rev (sold for $316M)

TechCrunch: $0 raised, 5M+ MAU, ? rev (sold for $25-30M)

Medium: $132M raised, 60M+ MAU, ? rev

Cracked: $0 raised, 10M+ MAU, $12M+ rev (sold for $39M[6])

Margins and growth are the diff between selling for 1.5x revenue and 10x
revenue[7] - clearly a few models, where you either raise a little and do well
with low headcount and organic audience, or raise $40M+ and set an expectation
of getting near 100M MAU with $40M+ p.a revenue with high margins (~50%) and
growth

[0]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mashable](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mashable)

[1] [https://admin.mashable.com/wp-
content/MashableMediaKit.pdf](https://admin.mashable.com/wp-
content/MashableMediaKit.pdf)

[2] [https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mashable-could-be-for-
sal...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mashable-could-be-for-sale-for-as-
much-as-300-million-2015-12?r=US&IR=T)

[3] [http://adage.com/article/media/private-equity-plowing-
money-...](http://adage.com/article/media/private-equity-plowing-money-
buzzfeed-vox/297034/)

[4] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vox-
media](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vox-media)

[5] [http://fortune.com/2015/09/29/business-insider-axel-
springer...](http://fortune.com/2015/09/29/business-insider-axel-springer/)

[6] [https://www.recode.net/2016/4/12/11586060/cracked-demand-
med...](https://www.recode.net/2016/4/12/11586060/cracked-demand-media-
scripps)

[7] [https://www.poynter.org/news/how-much-digital-media-
company-...](https://www.poynter.org/news/how-much-digital-media-company-
really-worth-guide)

~~~
adventured
The Wall Street Journal is reporting [1] that BuzzFeed is set to fall short of
their $350m 2017 sales target by 15% to 20%. So a better number on that might
be $280m to $300m.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-set-to-miss-revenue-
ta...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-set-to-miss-revenue-target-
signaling-turbulence-in-media-1510861771)

------
jamestimmins
Back in the day mashable seemed like a competitor to TechCrunch, with a focus
on tech news and trends. Then they pivoted toward viral content, and were
personally never a destination again.

It seemed a weird move even at the time. Why would you want to build a
business that's contingent upon catching the zeitgeist in a bottle? That's so
incredibly hard.

~~~
jenga22
If you look at raw traffic numbers Mashable is far bigger than Techcrunch and
far more profitable.

What you are feeling and seeing is that the media is turned into a hyper-
partisan machine where any issue discussed is in the context of extremes. It
drives emotion, creates and drives viral content, and drives revenue. However,
it doesn't produce substantive content one would find meaningful. It doesn't
pay.

~~~
nsp
Are you sure? I know there are better sources than alexa, but its usually
fairly accurate for top 1000 sites.

Techcrunch is 281 US, 632 world, Mashable is 364 US, 855 world.

[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com)
[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mashable.com](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mashable.com)

------
shortformblog
Mashable, notably, is often credited with kicking off the much-derided "pivot
to video" trend: [https://www.recode.net/2016/4/7/11585950/mashable-fires-
news...](https://www.recode.net/2016/4/7/11585950/mashable-fires-news-staff-
executives)

But the buyout is sad to me because, if you break it down, it was a really
great example of technology blog getting launched by a guy in his bedroom and
that guy finding major success with it. There was a time that Mashable was so
prominent in the social sphere that a new article of theirs could trend on
Twitter just because of the source.

Certainly, the company's never gone away (and it's produced some pretty
amazing alums in the journalism world, it should be said—Christina Warren and
Alex Fitzpatrick come to mind immediately), but the site's original
model—which was effectively a pitch to the masses of "Web 2.0 is awesome,
don't you agree?"—had a certain charm to it that got lost when it decided its
competition was BuzzFeed.

Certainly Mashable is no longer that kind of blog anymore, but this is sort of
the death knell of the big Web 2.0 blog—a list that includes sites like
ReadWriteWeb and GigaOm. Barring The Next Web (which I believe is still owned
by its original team), the ones that are still with us (like TechCrunch and
now Mashable) are largely conglomerate-owned.

Unfortunate that Cashmore put all that work into the site only to basically
break even.

~~~
Apocryphon
How about Pando?

~~~
shortformblog
It was founded after that era. (Though it's part of that lineage simply
because it features a lot of former TechCrunchers.) All the sites I listed
launched around 2005-2007, during the Web 2.0 years.

Sites like Pando and The Information really fit in a different
category—they're built less around aggregation like Mashable and company were
upon launch, and more on original reporting.

------
VonGuard
Ex-Ziff'er here. That company seems to exist to be sold. Back in late 1990's
it was split and sold: Things like Gamespot and TechTV came out of it. Now,
what's being sold is a husk of the old media empire. Kinda like Atari: mostly
name, and a few remaining properties.

~~~
Mrtierne
TechTV! That goes way back and now I miss G4

------
oblib
Years ago (mid-late `90s) I used to buy "MacWorld" magazine every month, which
I enjoyed. Not long after the internet became a thing they did a "Best Web
Browser" feature and gushed about "Netscape Navigator" to the point where I
got suspicious because on the Mac it was truly awful. Not that there was
anything better, but it was still crap.

That inspired me to comment on their AOL page that I thought they gushed too
much and I mentioned that after reading it I had to wonder if they owned stock
in Netscape. One their representatives came on and trashed me for insinuating
such a thing and then their fan club piled on me and just reamed me over my
comments but the very next month they had yet another article about it and
this one began with a disclaimer saying they did own stock in Netscape.

That was it for me. I never bought another issue of it or anything else they
published.

------
ThomPete
I owe a lot to mashable.

A friend of mine and I did this [http://mashable.com/2012/04/19/pinview-
facebook-pinterest-ap...](http://mashable.com/2012/04/19/pinview-facebook-
pinterest-app/#7zLe5tuCDZqx)

and they picked it up which then started a whole slew of other magazine
picking it up.

It was one of the reasons I could get an O visa as it gave me exposure in a
lot of international magainze.

Anway sad to see them sell for a while it was one of my favorite online blogs.

------
ghostcluster
Same parent company that recently bought Humble Bundle.

