Verizon and Hearst Team Up To Buy Complex Media (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Verizon Wireless and Hearst Corp. are set to jointly acquire Complex Media. The "video-first" lifestyle site, focused on pop-culture trends and general entertainment, will continue to operate independently, albeit with Verizon and Hearst now each owning 50 percent stakes in the company. Complex CEO and co-founder Rich Antoniello will continue to lead the company. The WSJ reports that the deal values Complex Media between $250 million and $300 million. "The decision to acquire Complex is certainly a continuation of our media strategy, which is focused on disruption that is occurring in digital media and content distribution, and involves building a portfolio of the emerging digital brands of the future for the millennial and Gen-Z audience," said Brian Angiolet, Verizon's senior vice president of consumer product and marketing.

Comments

BUZZWORD BINGO

[lucm]

That Verizon guy is a champion.

Complex is certainly a continuation of our media strategy, which is focused on disruption that is occurring in digital media and content distribution, and involves building a portfolio of the emerging digital brands of the future for the millennial and Gen-Z audience

Days like this I feel like the Amish are onto something

Re:BUZZWORD BINGO

[Kazoo the Clown]

And aren't they rumored to be looking to buy Yahoo as well? You got to give them credit, they really know how to pick the losers...

Re:BUZZWORD BINGO

[Hognoxious]

The best business to be in would be selling whatever it is they're smoking.

Re:BUZZWORD BINGO

[inode_buddha]

I think you just won the internet for today, just having the stamina to quote that.... scuse me while I go scrub my eyes out

Video is such an awful value proposition for consu

[Anonymous Coward]

For a given amount of content, video is easier to produce and insert interstitial advertising than text plus maybe graphics, but takes much longer for a person to digest or to retrieve bits of information from. If a web site wants to disengage me, the easiest way is to hide content behind a "play" button.

Re:Video is such an awful value proposition for co

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on. I typically don't "see" video content out there. Much more so when the video comes with some "player" which forces upon me its crippled version of uh... "user experience".

Weren' it for clive and youtube-dl I wouldn't watch any videos off the internet (except those providing a plain old link to a straight video file).

Want my eyeballs? Cater for them. You don't care? Nor do I.

Part of VZW FreeBee ?

[ripvlan]

How timely - Last night I logged onto vzw to check on my account status and saw a link for "reduce your network usage via FreeBee" - a Verizon version of "Binge On"

Intrigued I poked around and noticed that Hearst media and AOL are the primary companies offering content (Just look for the Bee). But I couldn't figure out how it worked - was VZW inserting the "bee" into my web stream - was it an ad on the websites. It isn't offered if you are on Wifi for instance.

Then in the FAQ I saw this strange comment: "A brand may direct encrypted content through a proxy in order to enable FreeBee Data. If the proxy option is chosen, the content will be temporarily unencrypted so the brand can be billed for the data usage."

Proxy? What proxy? Is VZW doing MIM stream editing? Using the gov't SSL keys? Proxy at the business level? or consumer to web level?

From ArsTechnica: "Hearst Magazines, AOL (which is owned by Verizon), and Lantern Software's GameDay"

http://freebee.verizonwireless...
http://freebee.verizonwireless...
http://arstechnica.com/busines...

Re:Video is such an awful value proposition for co

[Coren22]

On top of the video on every story, they all autoplay, with no way to stop it. If I wanted something making my computer talk and show video, I would click on the links with the camera on them, but every story having an autoplay video? What are they thinking?