Re:CNN to buy Mashable for $200 million +
by securitytheater on Monday March 12, 2012 @07:27AM
(#3693039)
What if they bought HN? Then throwing money at the problem would probably be a good thing for them.
It's ludicrous, but technically possible, and amusing to think about. Thank you for suggesting that.
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.
Like Conde Nast bought reddit?
Re:CNN to buy Mashable for $200 million +
by freehunter on Monday March 12, 2012 @08:41AM
(#3693210)
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.
Reddit is now worth at least ten times as much as when it was acquired.
Re:CNN to buy Mashable for $200 million +
by freehunter on Monday March 12, 2012 @10:33AM
(#3693638)
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.
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.
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.