Mashable’s Scottish chief stands to gain if CNN buys his tech site
YET another British entrepreneur has been forced to look beyond the UK’s coastline for cash, as reports suggest Pete Cashmore is about to sell his technology blog website Mashable to American broadcaster CNN.
The deal, which would see the Time Warner-owned news website buy Mashable for more than $200m (£128m), could be announced as early as this week.
Despite Mashable chief executive Pete Cashmore emailing employees to deny rumours that Mashable “will be acquired this week” – thus leaving the doors open for a future announcement – a deal would not be a huge surprise.
The American news site already syndicates some of Mashable’s stories and Cashmore writes a regular CNN column.
Cashmore, 26, grew up in the Scottish town of Banchory and founded Mashable, which gets more than 20m unique visitors a month, in 2005 at the age of 19.
In 2009 he was named in Forbes’ Top 25 Web Celebs and crowned by INQ as the most influential Briton and most influential Twitter user in the world.
In 2010 he was included in the Time Magazine 100.