Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore at reportedly denied the rumors to Mashable staff.

Business Insider is now reporting, citing two unnamed sources, that Mashable execs have been preparing for an acquisition by CNN. Nicholas Carlson writes:

One source tells us that Mashable has audited its finances and sent them to Turner.
…

This source also says Mashable executives have been holding meetings to discuss which Mashable divisions will be integrated into CNN and which will not be. A second source close to Mashable confirms that executives have been working on a deal with CNN. This source speculates that the deal is 80% likely to close.

Personally, I like the idea of Conan O’Brien acquiring Mashable better:

The video posted today announcing the purchase of the company details what happens between Conan O’Brien and former Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore. O’Brien called Cashmore at home and yelled angrily, and I quote, “You’re out! Get out! You’re through Cashmore! Through! Get out!” Unfortunately for O’Brien, verbal threats weren’t enough to get Cashmore to step down, and that was when O’Brien went for every man’s weakness – the all mighty dollar. Yes, O’Brien has bought his way into the CEO-ship of Mashable for a grand amount of $3,500. You read that right, folks. O’Brien is a big spender and he is not afraid to empty his bank account.

Even though it’s a Sunday, O’Brien has already been enormously busy as the new CEO of Mashable. He has changed the Mashable color scheme to white and orange with his hair adorning the “e” in the Mashable logo. He has also been breaking news in the tech sector today when he stole and live tested the rumored Apple TV.

It’s going to be an interesting day and week for Mashable as they transition to being run by O’Brien. We wish Cashmore the best of luck in his future endeavors. Perhaps he can take over as CEO of Yahoo! as an April Fools Day joke next year.

Reports are coming out of SXSW that CNN is in talks to acquire Mashable. This is being reported by the New York Times and multiple others, though there’s no word yet from either CNN or Mashable.

The NYT cites “three people with knowledge of the talks” as its sources. Reuters reports, citing an unnamed source that “It’s entirely possible” that CNN will buy Mashable for over $200 million, and that an announcement is expected on Tuesday.

Mashable’s sale to a bigger media entity has been rumored for years. In early 2010, rumors were going around that AOL was going to buy it. Obviously that didn’t happen, though AOL did buy TechCrunch and The Huffington Post.

As Felix Salmon mentions in the video the TechCrunch acquisition has hardly been smooth for AOL, as many of the site’s key writers have left. Mashable has already lost some if its key writers, so that will be an important element to consider going forward, acquisition or no.

Some have indicated that they think $200 million would make the acquisition overvalued, but Mashable’s more consumer-oriented focus (as compared to a site like TechCrunch), along with its pageviews, have enabled the site to attract big advertiser money.

Mashable has also been able to expand its own brand at a high level through various partnerships, including with CNN itself.

While Sherk points out that the list of organizations isn’t meant to be comprehensive (really, as expansive as news is on the Internet, how could it be?), what’s revealing about Sherk’s study of the data is that he didn’t originally include the total +1, shares, and comments in his data. After a suggestion from a member of Breaking News, though, Sherk went back and included the data in his analysis. Below are the results of his original data compilation, which you’ll notice has some very noticeable shake-ups in the rankings when compared to the more comprehensive table above.

In case you were wondering why I included the top eleven Google+ accounts in the first table, now you probably see why: New York Times went from ranking #1 in the first table to falling all the way to #11. Actually, most standard news organizations like The Times, NPR, BBC, Le Monde, and The Atlantic all fell in ranking while tech-oriented news sources all climbed in ranking.

John Murrell at AllThingsD reports that word got out that Parr was no longer with Mashable, when emails to him were returned with a message simply saying, “no longer here”. AllThingsD shares a short message from Mashable, which simply said, “confirming the terms of departure were termination.”

His author bio page on Mashable now says, “He is best-known as the former editor-at-large of Mashable…,” and “Ben is currently working on a yet-to-be-announced project. He also recently completed his first sci-fi thriller novel, Desel. His previous experience includes project management for Facebook applications and content management in the web health space.”

Matt Lynley at Business Insider reports:

Parr had originally intended to stay until July next year after receiving a $250,000 cash bonus, according to several sources familiar to the matter.

Several sources described Parr’s brand on the site as “critical,” which prompted Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore to offer him an impressive package to stay.

Lynley points to another piece he posted last week, with a deeper look at what’s been going on internally at Mashable, which includes a new editor in chief (Lance Ulanoff from PC Mag), and the loss of some writers. He also says sources indicate founder Pete Cashmore is looking to sell it like the Huffington Post sold to AOL.

In another post on Business Insider, Christopher Parr of Pursuitist says, “Hack technology site Mashable continues to implode. After loosing some of their best talent, including Jolie O’Dell and Jenn Van Grove, Mashable editor-at-large Ben Parr has been fired. Parr, one of the few remaining writers with any talent at the link-bate Mashable, has been with the site since 2008.”

Pretty harsh.

On Friday, Mashable named a new “deputy editor” and the expansion of its tech coverage. That editor would be Chris Taylor. Ulanoff wrote, “Taylor joined Mashable in January as San Francisco Bureau Chief and has proven himself as an insightful editor and leader. He will now oversee the development of reporters, while working closely withMashable’s editor-in-chief to select, develop and coordinate news coverage across the site.”

New tech reporters include: Samantha Murphy and Pete Pachal.

Parr just posted his big “Goodbye to Mashable“. In that, he says:

As for what’s next: I am considering several opportunities right now and will definitely keep you all posted as to my future plans. I want to leverage the national platform that I have built and use it to help, empower and reach as many people as I can. I’m exploring options in the media world, the entertainment world, the startup world, the venture capital world and elsewhere. But as always, I’m open to suggestions.

I remain an advisor to NerdsUnite Productions, Tracks.by, Code Academy, Women 2.0 and a few other startups. And I am always interested in working with other brilliant entrepreneurs with ambitious business ideas.

He doesn’t talk about the circumstances that led to his departure. He has not responded so far to our request for comment.

Lead image from BenParr.com

View other daily video round-ups here.

Steve Jobs describes iCloud in ’97?

Apple Store opens in Hong Kong:

Chris Brogan shares location based marketing for dummies:

A man attempts to do 24 different accents in the English language (via Jeremiah Owyang on Google+):

TV watching record to be broken?

Mashable shares some interesting videos from the Social Good Summit:

Of course, there are plenty of factors that could be contributing here. For one, Business Insider is pushing out a ton of articles these days, and on a variety of topics. It’s not all tech, or even all business at this point. It’s pretty much become an all-purpose news source, leaving the name “Business Insider” a little misleading. That’s not to say they don’t cover business well, but visit the site, and you’ll find sections on Tech, Media, Sports, Lifestyle, Politics, Travel, Etc. The content will still often have a business angle, but not always.

This kind of branching out into other content areas by previously niche publications has drawn some criticism. In fact, a TechCrunch writer recently blasted Mashable for this kind of thing (which I defended here). Interestingly enough, Business Insider has also been known to syndicate articles from other sources, including TechCrunch itself.

Business Insider puts out a ton of content. They seem to be going for almost a Huffington Post-type thing. In terms of unique visitors, it seems to be playing out well for them so far.

It’s worth noting that Compete’s data is all U.S. and has been subject to its own share of criticism. Last week, we ran a piece, in which Compete’s Damian Roskill, Managing Director of Marketing, compared Compete data and Google Analytics data to Apples and Oranges.

If you look at Mashable’s topic page for Osama bin Laden, it currently contains 33 stories (probably far less than a lot of publications). Is this really a problem?

Is Mashable’s (and many other publications’) strategy justified? Tell us what you think.

The angles of these articles include:

- a webinar
- tv ratings
- tweet-by-tweet infographic
- Will Ferrell doing a sketch
- bin Laden searches
- bin Laden memes
- NFL star tweets
- altered MLK Jr. quote going viral
- PCs/Thumb drives captured
- how the social web reflected upon the death
- YouTube video
- Situation room images released
- Obama/Osama gaffes in the media
- yahoo searches spiked
- record tweets per hour

The list goes on. You can see them all here.

Here’s Cashmore’s tweet:

Tech blog TechCrunch, which is owned by AOL, and is now under the broad net of the Huffington Post Media Group, is no stranger to criticizing blogging peers, and while not on TechCrunch itself, one of the publication’s writers took to his personal blog to call Mashable’s approach “pathetic”. MG Siegler writes:

Imagine that, you write 35 200-word posts featuring the words “Bin Laden” in the headline and they pull in traffic on the day it’s one of the most searched terms ever. 

This is the state of tech blogging these days. It’s shifting more towards a mixture of quick-posted nonsense and pure SEO plays.

I (along with many others) can certainly see Siegler’s point (and for the record, I think he does a lot of good reporting), but I also think there are some flaws to it. For one, as some others have pointed out, TechCrunch has had its share of posts that could be seen in the same way (even bin Laden-related). That’s fine. That’s their choice.

Maybe they don’t do it to the extent that Mashable does, but they do it. It’s about covering hot topics. People search for hot topics. They’re hot because people are thirsty for information about them. Why is it bad if a publication wants to provide information people are seeking to their own readers?

We’ve also covered some of the same storylines from the above Mashable list.

If the issue is that the posts are too short, I’ve also seen plenty of very short posts from both TechCrunch and the Huffington Post. Sometimes posts don’t need to be long to get the point across. Sometimes readers don’t want a long post. Sometimes it’s enough to point the reader to the source. They want the heart of the story and then want to move on. We’re living in an age where there is simply too much information coming from all angles, and less time to consume it all.

Doesn’t the Huffington Post owe a great deal of its own success to this kind of coverage?

It’s also about growth. Why should a publication not seek to expand its audience? Clearly, this works to do so, as Cashmore’s tweet indicates.

If Google had a problem with this, it wouldn’t have Google Trends. It wouldn’t have given sites like Mashable and The Huffington Post boosts in search visibility with the Panda update. Cashmore told WebProNews directly, Mashable’s Google traffic is “holding strong.”

Search trends indicate demand for information. Why can’t a publication give its own readers such information, while seeking to expand that amount of readers in the process? If readers don’t like what they see, they’ll leave, and if they come back often enough and never like what they see, they’ll never come back. They might even block the domain from their search results. That’s not good for search.

Any publication engaging in this kind of coverage, has to keep their core audience in mind, and still deliver on that. As long as they’re delivering on that, and not taking credit away from sources that deserve it, it seems like a legitimate practice to me. If the publication doesn’t deliver what its audience wants, it will stop having an audience. That goes more so on the web than on TV for example.

Yesterday, I saw a headline scroll across the bottom of CNN about Jennifer Love-Hewitt breaking up with her boyfriend. This was FOLLOWED by a story about aid to victims of the tornadoes in the south. Clearly this is about more than just search. CNN, the TV station isn’t getting search engine traffic on this kind of stuff.

Mashable has grown into a mainstream news source, despite its largely social media angle. A lot of people spend a lot of time looking at content there. Why should they not be informed of certain things while they’re already on Mashable. Or already on Facebook (seeing a Mashable update in their news feed)? Sometimes it’s not about breaking the news, as much as letting your audience know that the news (which a lot of people care about) has been broken.

By the way, this is a strategy that has been in place for years (outside of the search factor) even in print. Think sports coverage in the Wall Street Journal.

Another point is that new media publications like a Mashable or a TechCrunch or a WebProNews might bring a different perspective to the table than the traditional media.

If it’s about reporting only when you’re on the scene, nobody was on the scene in the case of Osama. Every publication traditional or new media was regurgitating the information that was made available by the White House to one extent or another.

Mashable has not stopped delivering on the kind of content that helped get it to where it’s at today. It’s just expanded. If you only want tech news from Mashable, they have a section for that. They even have a feature that lets you follow specific topics.

Look at BuisnessInsider, which TechCrunch seems to let syndicate its own articles sometimes. It’s in a very similar boat, if not to a much greater extent. I don’t think it’s hurting that site either.

There are numerous ways for people to consume the content they want. Cashmore himself said at SXSW last year, “People need to become more educated consumers of news.” That’s the truth.

If a publication wants to expand its coverage, it has the right to do so, and its readers can make up their minds whether or not they want to read.

Siegler says, “Welcome to the sad state of our industry.” Is it sad, or is important (or at least trending) information simply more accessible because of the growing number of publications covering it (many with unique angles or voices to bring to the equation)?

Readers have more choices than they’ve ever had. Are they all great? No, but can’t you make that choice yourself?

Do you think the news industry is in a sad state or in a better state than it’s ever been? Let us know in the comments.

Most of the list looks pretty familiar, but we couldn’t help but notice that Mashable was on the list, registering a -40% hit in downstream traffic from Google in the U.S. At a quick glance, it would seem to indicate that Mashable was lumped in with sites like eHow, EzineArticles, and Associated Content. However, Mashable is a different breed of site, which makes us very skeptical that Google is actually looking at Mashable’s content in any different and significant way.

The fact is that Mashable is a news site. Most of the sites affected negatively are more focused on evergreen content. News and evergreen content simply work in different ways when it comes to search. That’s not to say that Mashable doesn’t have evergreen content. It does. But when you’re primarily a news-oriented site, your search traffic is not always going to be consistent. We know. We’re in this business too.

You can have a big hit in Google one day, then not as much the next. You can have a good week of lots of good news-based search traffic. Then not have as much luck the next. This can fluctuate all the time. I suspect this is more the reason Mashable is on that list, rather than the Panda update having a significantly negative impact on the site.

Mashable almost certainly gets a lot more traffic from other sources (besides Google) than a lot of the other sites on the list do. Mashable undoubtedly gets tons of traffic from social sites like Facebook and Twitter, not to mention links from other news sites, as it’s one of the most prominent sites in the social media/tech news space. By nature, Mashable is much less dependent on Google for traffic than a site like eHow or EzineArticles (though these sites are making efforts to become less dependent on Google).

The data Hitwise/Forbes has provided shows (allegedly) what percentage of outgoing Google traffic has been going to pages from the sites listed. As Jeff Bercovici of Forbes writes, “Hitwise looked at downstream traffic from Google — ie. what sites do users surf to next after visiting Google.com. In the first two weeks of January, 0.57 percent of those who departed Google next visited a site operated by Demand Media, the best known of the content farms.”

As I’m still seeing Mashable consistently show up on the first page of Google results, I don’t imagine any significant loss is a permanent change, if the data is even accurate. It’s worth noting that in recent data from SearchMetrics, Mashable was one of the top post-Panda winners in the UK, with a 22.61% visibility increase.

Now Yelp is looking to make the service even more interesting by adding a location based feature that allows reviewers to show how many times they have “checked in” to a location that they have reviewed. Mashable tells us more

Last week, the battle for your check-ins took an interesting new turn as Yelp rolled out a set of location features for its iPhone app. Today, Yelp’s expanding the feature to include check-in information alongside user reviews on its website.

With that small step, you can see exactly why check-ins are such a big deal for Yelp and a big threat to upstarts like Foursquare and Gowalla. We’re told that Yelp just passed nine million reviews, and now, with the ability to connect check-in data to individual reviews, the company is hoping to add further credibility to its users’ ratings.

According to the article this feature is only available for iPhone apps but versions for Android, BlackBerry and the like are on the horizon. Here’s a look at how these check-in appear in a review.

They also show up in a user’s profile by their reviews. This is important because it gives some level of participation to the site by giving users the ability to add more depth and credibility to their reviews if they have repeatedly “checked in” from that location.

Mashable’s Adam Ostrow makes an interesting observation about this feature as it relates to the level of competition this service could provide to a much smaller high flyer of late, Foursquare, which is a location based ‘game’.

……..the most interesting aspect of Foursquare is not the game, but seeing where your friends are, and Yelp’s doing that too. Given Yelp has a big headstart, it’s hard not to see it representing a big threat to the startups — though Facebook and its expected location features still loom large as well.

I am not a participant in any of these location-based activities personally. There are a lot of reasons for it and I explain a few here. Whether I use it or not though is obviously not the point. There appears to be a real growing wave of moving toward filling this apparent obsession of knowing where everyone is at all times and letting them know where you are. It’s like a location tweet of sorts.

As marketers, there could be tremendous value that will be discovered with time. Who will be the players that really take advantage of it and allow themselves to ‘stub their toes’ early on in the ‘monetization of location’ game should be fun to watch.

Are you seeing any real effective early adopters marketers who leverage location based services out there? Do tell.

Comments