
CNN to buy Mashable for $200 million + - kunle
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/03/12/cnn-to-buy-social-media-blog-mashable-for-200-million-a-little-bird-tells-reuters-reporter/?awesm=tnw.to_1Dcix&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=CNN%20to%20buy%20social%20media%20blog%20Mashable%20for%20$200%20million%20,%20a%20little%20bird%20tells%20Reuters%20reporter
======
geuis
I 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
What if they bought HN? Then throwing money at the problem would probably be a
good thing for them.

~~~
geuis
How 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
Like Conde Nast bought reddit?

~~~
freehunter
And 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.

~~~
drx
Reddit is now worth at least ten times as much as when it was acquired.

~~~
freehunter
True, but this wasn't the doing of Conde Nast, nor did Conde Nast see this 10x
increase when they pushed reddit out on its own. Reddit's growth was organic.

Last I heard, CN still owns reddit even though the site now operates
independently, so CN still has the chance to recoup their investment, but this
will take a more profitable business model without sacrificing user trust.
Valuations on sheer page hits or user counts are faulty with a capital F U if
you can't figure out how to make money from them.

~~~
mburns
It doesn't matter if it was Conde Nast's doing. They made an investment in a
new media property, and it has seemingly gone splendidly with little to no
'fallout' from having a corporate overlord owning a community site.

------
jgroome
Forgive me if I sound ignorant, but... How in the name of everlasting gods can
Mashable of all things be worth $200,000,000?

~~~
gjulianm
I 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
That's about $10 per unique visitor if they're paying for traffic... if CNN
are buying it for page views they're... stupid.

------
AznHisoka
I 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
So 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.

------
spinchange
I remember when Mashable was on a blogger account and Pete was running it out
of his parents basement. Well done, Pete and team.

------
kmfrk
I'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
I +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?

------
itsprofitbaron
Having 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.

------
kloncks
Makes the $25,000,000 AOL spent on TechCrunch seem so paltry.

~~~
bvi
I'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...

~~~
brianbreslin
Mashable 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
'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!

------
fpp
Article 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..."

------
majani
The 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
I'd like you to extrapolate on the software commodity quote.

------
simondlr
Has anyone felt Mashable sort of deteriorated the past few months?

~~~
wyclif
I was never very impressed by Mashable. Far too much linkbait.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
Far 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
Seems to work to sell for $200M :-)

~~~
joering2
No. 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.

------
ChrisArchitect
If 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.

------
Achshar
Well 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!

------
blackysky
first 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....

------
jacquesm
They're about 20 days early with this announcement.

This is like seeing a re-run of the broadcast.com sale.

------
sad_panda
$200 million?

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

------
webwanderings
Finally, both TechCrunch and Mashable are dead!

~~~
funkah
Sure, they're dead. In the same way that NeXT is dead.

------
spacestation
"surely, you must be kidding?"

must be a typo. 20 million, right.

------
dotcoma
How clueless can CNN be?

------
shingen
The word is: boondoggle

