Netizen: Pete Cashmore

Showing posts with label Pete Cashmore. Show all posts

Thursday, June 03, 2010

The Mashable Success Story

Image representing Mashable as depicted in Cru...

Mashable has been a remarkable success story in blogging. Pete Cashmore started it when he was 19. He started it in his bedroom in Scotland where he is from. By now it gets more page hits then the top tech blog TechCrunch. That has been true for months. Mashable has a more well defined niche than TechCrunch, and it is more focused on the user.

Switching from being a one person blog to a team blog must have been a major milestone for Mashable. The fact that Mashable has no plans to be sold - "Everyone has a price, but ours is a really high" - should tell you the blog has serious plans to keep digging in its niche. Getting sold to a bigger name company might only blunt that one edge the blog has, that it is your ultimate social media guide. Why not just keep building the traffic, and keep adding to the content, and keep charging more for the ads, right?

The Facebook founder was also 19 when he launched Facebook.

Mashable Did It
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
2010 Trends: Pete Cashmore's Take

TechCrunch Vs. Mashable: There's No Competition Mashable is more about internet culture than pure tech news these days..... if there's a hot celebrity story trending on Twitter they'll find a way of covering it to reap the search engine traffic, if there's a viral video doing well they'll embed it to get the retweets.
AOL In Talks To Acquire Mashable -- Reports AOL is trying to transition from an ISP to a next-generation media company. .... It already has 80 or so independently branded blogs and is planning to grow to more than 100.
The Man Behind Mashable He's been crowned the king of Twitter and is one of the most influential figures in the technology industry. ..... Since setting up Mashable in 2005, while working as a web technology consultant, Cashmore has divided his time between his home town of Aberdeen and the bright lights of Silicon Valley. He's been in Scotland since October, and won't return to the US until January, relying on his team of 15 full-time bloggers and 50 regular contributors to help him keep on top of the key stories.
Mashable’s Identity Crisis They’ve reached that point of critical mass that most bloggers only dream of. The last I heard they had suprassed 20 million page views a month ...... a few months ago Mashable made BIG NEWS by announcing they were going to be hiring real, actual journalists .... some kind of direction shift for Mashable and that they were now interested in serious reportage and investigative journalism ....... s sensationalist and often pedantic blogging ..... Right now it is on track to be the People Magazine of social media. ..... they are interested more in acting like a tabloid.
So What Do You Do, Pete Cashmore, Mashable Founder and CEO? not yet 25. ..... Founding the site was pretty much his first job, as he worked as a Web consultant for a short time beforehand. The site's mission is to be "the social media guide" and cover all things social media. ...... starting Mashable in 2006 from his bedroom in Scotland. He was 19 at the time. ....... I just was really passionate about the space, and wanted to get involved, and I felt like social networking wasn't being covered to the degree it could be. ....... It was personal interest. I didn't necessarily know there was an audience for it. ...... In 2006, we did our first ad deal. It was only a few thousand per month, but it kind of legitimized blogging as a business. Selling a first ad legitimized that this may go somewhere -- this may actually work. ....... When you compare [Mashable] to old school tech magazines, we certainly say we're more focused on the user and the utility for users. For example, we don't cover things like funding announcements. We focus on the user. ...... there is value in both original reporting and curation ...... They're going to cover what they're going to cover. It's up to them. ...... There is no point in writing like the pyramid anymore. You have to write the story in three paragraphs. ..... They need to become both sources of news and curators of community-sourced news. ..... Content is not a scarce resource; attention is a scarce resource. If you put [up] barriers, they will go elsewhere. In the vast majority of cases, a pay wall is a hindrance. We should be focusing on how we [can] make ad models that are more engaging rather than push readers to other sites. ....... We're in a niche where we feel we're leading.
History Of Pete Cashmore's Mashable.com
Mashable Lost its Visitors after the 2010 Redesign Techcrunch now has more unique visitors than Mashable. Techcrunch also seems to have grown ‘only’ +35.54% since last year where Mashable has grown +29.00%. ..... Pete Cashmore’s ‘little’ start-up blog Mashable first overtook the might of Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch back in May 2009 ..... Its Change of pure tech news into tech news + Celebrity news

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Pete Cashmore

2010 Trends: Pete Cashmore's Take

Image by tedmurphy via Flickr

"....the continued spread of social media, location sharing, and Internet TV...."

Social media has not seen its full manifestations. So yeah 2010 might be bigger for social media than 2009 has been. But it was 2009 when Twitter really took off as a buzz brand. Facebook keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Facebook has figured out something basic that Twitter has not, not yet. The everyperson gets Facebook. That everyperson does not get Twitter yet. It has been more of a tech elite application. Granted that covers most of those who shape thoughts, but I would not bet my business model just on that.

FourSquare is the next Twitter, if you believe the buzz. Location sharing is the web going a little bit 3D. That is very much up my alley. I have kept arguing Web 3.0 is not the semantic web, it is the 3D web.

Our broadband pipes are going to get bigger. We will consume more video format content online. Video in real time is TV, right?

Pete Cashmore's CNN Article: 10 Web Trends To Watch In 2010

2010 is looking really good for one giant: Google. Wave and Android will really take off. But this Cashmore article will be an interesting read a year from now. Future can not be predicted. That is inherent. Could we have foreseen Fall 2009 in Fall 2008? I doubt it.

"....location is not about any singular service; rather, it's a new layer of the Web...."

This comment is very insightful.

Matt Galligan, Pete Cashmore, Brian DeWitt

Image by *Samantha Murphy* via Flickr

"How many desktop applications do we really need"

Just one, the browser.

".....a converse trend in which task-specific devices gain popularity......"

It is because our tech realities are an ecosystem. There is room for the all-in-one and the one-in-one. And more.

Farmville has a message. It is a major business trend.

Privacy as a concept will get redefined. It will get new life.

What is most interesting to me about this article by Pete Cashmore is the interaction between old media - CNN - and new media - Mashable. I think CNN is more a brand name than an old media entity. They have the option to incorporate new media and social media into that brand. And they are doing it. Old brand names need not die, but they do need to face the new reality.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Pete Cashmore

Friday, June 12, 2009

Mashable Did It

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
TechCrunch Now Number Two Tech Blog As Mashable Surges Business Insider

Mashable did it. They rose with the rise of social media. While TechCrunch wanted to cover everything tech, Mashable honed on its niche. It refused to cover everything tech and instead honed on primarily social media. Mashable has aspired to be the bridge between the average person and social media. And they have done the smart thing of selling their own

Image by Laughing Squid via Flickr

ads. When you do that, you can ask for much higher prices.

Congratulations to the team. Pete Cashmore has been ubiquitous on Twitter, more so than Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki has been more of a lone shark. Pete has zoomed ahead by building a high profile team around him.

People talk of Dell using Twitter as a marketing tool. I think no other brand name has used Twitter to its benefit quite like Mashable. That just might have been their biggest secret weapon, or maybe not so secret.

Mashable rose by demystifying Twitter for the average person. Mashable rose by having a hyper active Twitter stream.

Nobody explains Twitter quite like Mashable.

Mashable: Twitter

Image by nanpalmero via Flickr