Mashable plans to downsize its video team as it moves away from developing and making shows for digital content buyers.
For some of the publishers chasin the broadest scale, maybe. A new study from the Reuters Institute examines the strengths and weaknesses of seven globally ambitious news companies — Brut, Business Insider, De Correspondent, HuffPost, Mashable, Quartz, and Vice.
Twelve years after founding Mashable as a humble tech blog, Pete Cashmore announced to his employees in a memo on Tuesday morning that he sold the company to trade publisher Ziff Davis. He confirmed that there will be layoffs as a result of the transaction. Recode reported that 50 employees will be laid off. The company is not commenting on that number.
Sometimes it’s better to buy than build. That’s the real takeaway from Ziff Davis acquiring Mashable. A deal that’s reportedly worth $50 million. When you hear a number like that you don’t necessarily think fire sale, but in Mashable’s case it’s a deep discount from where the company was a year or two ago. How quickly the tables can turn.
Exclusives
Mashable is one of at least a half dozen online media companies — including Defy Media and Uproxx Media — weighing whether to sell, according to people familiar with their efforts. With ads tough to sell and new capital hard to raise, dreams of creating new digital behemoths have given way to a more realistic view that survival may hinge on being part of a larger company.
The chief revenue officer of Mashable has exited the digital media company, which shifted its focus away from general news last year.
As more and more new platforms emerge, the importance of user data grows in guiding programming and advertising strategies.
Mashable Partners With Linear TV Networks
The new initiatives with Mashable, Tastemade, Buzzfeed and Vox are designed to expand NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises’ efforts to reach the “Generation M” — mobile, multicultural, millennials — with original content tailored to their cultural interests.
Mashable Executive Editor Jim Roberts will leave the company and at least a dozen members of the site’s editorial staff will be laid off as part of a “strategic shift” toward video.
Next Up For Sale: Mashable
Mashable, the 10-year-old digital tech news phenomenon, looks like the next big digital news organization to test the waters for a sale. The company is being shopped to potential buyers, confidential sources say. Deutsche Bank is doing the shopping, looking for a deal as big as $300 to $350 million.
In addition to his Big Interviews on the AXS cable channel, Dan Rather has also signed on for reporting and analysis at the website Mashable, where his story urging people not to get too wound up about the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign appeared this week.
Most publishers pushing into video try get people to their sites and then use YouTube for marketing. Not so for Mashable, which is centralizing its video strategy firmly around YouTube. Over the last year, the tech news and Web-culture publisher has aggressively built a bigger presence on the Google video hub, allocating a substantial chunk of its recent $14 million funding round to video production efforts. In recent months, Mashable has tailored its editorial video content strategy around the young YouTube community.
