Mashable is a

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...

platform, news website and entertainment company founded by

Pete Cashmore Pete Cashmore (born 18 September 1985) is the founder and former CEO of the popular media and entertainment company, publication and digital platform Mashable, which started as a Technorati Top 10 blog worldwide. He grew up in Banchory, Aberdeen ...

in 2005.

History

Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

, Scotland, in July 2005. Early iterations of the site were a simple

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

blog, with Cashmore as sole author. Fame came relatively quickly, with ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine noting Mashable as one of the 25 best blogs of 2009. As of November 2015, it had over 6,000,000

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

followers and over 3,200,000 fans on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

. In June 2016, it acquired

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

channel CineFix from

Whalerock Industries Whalerock Industries is an American media and technology company. Based in West Hollywood, Whalerock partners with public figures and brands to create, build and operate direct-to-consumer multi-media apps which integrate music, video, live stream ...

. In December 2017,

Ziff Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, an ...

bought Mashable for $50 million, a price described by ''Recode'' as a "fire sale" price. Mashable had not been meeting its advertising targets, accumulating $4.2 million in losses in the quarter ending September 2017. After the sale, Mashable laid off 50 staffers, but preserved top management. Under Ziff Davis, Mashable has grown and expanded to many countries in multiple continents, including Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia in several languages. In June 2021, Jessica Coen, Mashable's editor-in-chief, left the company to join Morning Brew.

Mashable Awards

On 27 November 2007, Mashable launched the 1st International Open Web Awards to recognize the best online communities and services. Voting was conducted online through ''Mashable'' and its 24 blog partners. On 10 January 2008 at the

Palace Hotel, San Francisco The Palace Hotel is a landmark historic hotel in San Francisco, California, located at the southwest corner of Market and New Montgomery streets. The hotel is also referred to as the "new" Palace Hotel to distinguish it from the original 1875 ...

, Mashable announced the winners of the first Open Web Awards. Winners included

Digg Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launch ...

, Facebook,

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

, Twitter,

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

, Cafemom and Pandora. The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards was an online international competition that took place between November and December 2008. Among the winners in the "People's Choice" component were

Encyclopedia Dramatica Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED; also spelled Encyclopædia Dramatica) is a satirical online community centered around a wiki that acts as a "troll archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from Google ...

in the

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

category, Digg in the "Social News and Social Bookmarking" category,

Netlog Netlog (formerly known as Facebox and Bingbox) was a Belgian social networking service targeted at the global youth demographic. On Netlog, members could create their own web page, meet new people, chat, play games, share videos and post blogs. T ...

in the "Mainstream and Large Social Networks" category and MySpace in the "Places and Events" category. The 3rd Open Web Awards were held in November and December 2009. Winners included

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying indi ...

for best mobile music site or app, Fish Wrangler for best Facebook game, and "Surprise Marriage Proposal in Spain" as best YouTube video, and Music Blog ''World As I Der See It!'' published b
Derek Michael Sheldon
for Best Blogger to Follow. In 2010, Mashable renamed the Open Web Awards to the 4th Annual Mashable Awards. The Mashable Awards officially launched on 27 September 2010 with nominations for categories including Best Mobile Game, Best Use of an API, Best Web Video, Most Promising New Company and Entrepreneur of the Year. Winners included

HootSuite Hootsuite is a social media management platform, created by Ryan Holmes in 2008. The system's user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube an ...

for Best Social Media Management Tool,

ReachLocal ReachLocal, Inc. (ReachLocal) is an online marketing and advertising provider for advertising to consumers in local markets. It provides Internet and mobile Internet marketing to business clients in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. ...

for Best Social Media Service for Small Business,

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

for Best New Gadget, and ''

Angry Birds ''Angry Birds'' is a Finnish action-based media franchise created by Rovio Entertainment. The game series focuses on the eponymous flock of angry birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. Inspired by the game ''Crush the Castl ...

'' for Best Mobile Game.

References

{{Ziff Davis Internet properties established in 2005 2005 establishments in Scotland American technology news websites Websites about digital media 2017 mergers and acquisitions

History

Mashable Awards

See also

References