Time Inc Acquires Viant, Owner Of Myspace And A Vast Ad Tech Network

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Source: TechCrunch

It looks like Myspace is becoming a big-media property once again. Today during its quarterly earnings report, Time Inc announced that it has acquired Viant, a profitable company that has built a large ad tech business, but also owns other properties, including once-hot social networking site Myspace. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. As part of it, Time Inc will become a majority owner of Viant, with the Vanderhook family, which founded Viant, retaining a minority stake (percentages undisclosed).

A spokesperson for Viant tells us that Time Inc. intends to keep all of Viant and run it as an independent business. The company also includes, in addition to MySpace and the Advertising Cloud product, Vindico, Specific Media and Xumo. “It’s business as usual,” he said.

Time plans to combine Viant’s business with its own, creating a big data, ad targeting powerhouse. Specifically, Time says it will “merge its premium content, subscriber data, and advertising inventory with Viant’s first party data and programmatic capabilities to bring substantial value to customers of both platforms.”

That premium content attracts 150 million visitors each month to more than 60 websites. Big-name consuer brands under Time include People, Sports Illustrated, InStyle, Time, Real Simple, Southern Living, Entertainment Weekly and more.

And now, that will also include Myspace.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/time-inc-acquires-viant-owner-of-myspace-and-a-vast-ad-tech-network/

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I didn't realize people even used MySpace anymore...

[olddots]

1. Time marches backward

[HooptieWagon]

2. I thought Justin Timberlake had bought MySpace at a fire sale.

I guess not. Probably little value there, I don't know anybody that uses it anymore.

[Tab]

4. He did

hoping to launch it into some kind of artist/media site. I don't know the chronology after that, but presumable Viant acquired it, and then Time acquired Viant.

Apparently it still pulls in some money, but not what it once did. However, I note that Time did not specifically sent out to buy MySpace itself, but it was one of the assets when it got Viant. No idea if Justin made any money off the deal, or maybe he's still an equity owner. I don't really care, actually. I'm curious to see what Time does with it, if anything.

[HooptieWagon]

6. That's the story I heard from several musician friends at the time.

They were hopefull it would become a usefull tool, but nothing appears to have come out of it.

[Botany]

3. Myspace?

next up they will get into the electrical telegraph business too.

[Tab]

5. Not to be too pedantic

but I believe that's a Telex machine, not a traditional telegraph, unless Telex is considered an "electrical telegraph" (technically, all telegraph mechanisms are "electrical&quot . It looks like an early Telex (they had rotary dials, pushbuttons came later), but it's a nice specimen. I assume this is in some museum somewhere.

[Botany]

7. I think you might be right

thanx

[jmowreader]

8. It is a Siemens T100

https://www.in.tum.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/ITuepferl/Museum/Museum_Fernschreiber_Siemens_T100.pdf will tell you all about it. It transmits at 10 characters per second and has no lowercase characters.

...and if it's anything like the Teletype Model 15, the operator kept a gallon of machine oil on the floor next to it because the greasier it is the better it works.

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9. At 10 cps

hopefully it also had an empty bucket on the floor so the operator could use it while waiting.

[jmowreader]

11. It wasn't necessary

You CAN transmit directly from the keyboard, but most people didn't.

There are three kinds of teleprinters: RO, KSR and ASR.

RO means "receive only." If you look at an old movie or TV show with a newsroom scene, there are always a row of printers with signs above them to name the wire the printer is hooked to - AP, UP, Reuters, McClatchy, and so on and so forth. These machines are RO printers. (A newspaper that has wire service transmitting privileges as opposed to just receiving privileges had two lines coming into the building - one for each privilege. As you would expect, the AP feed of today comes in via Internet...which makes the paper REAL thin if you lose your Internet.)

KSR means "keyboard send and receive." The only reason you need one of these is to service a network; what everyone actually used was ...

ASR means "automatic send and receive." If you sit down at the keyboard of your ASR machine that is connected to a live telephone line and start typing, it will transmit everything you type. (BTW, 10 characters per second is 120 words per minute - faster than most people can type.) The ASR machine also has a paper tape reader-distributor mechanism. In this schema, you'd own one machine that was connected to a phone line, and several machines that just punched paper tape. After a typist completed a message she would remove it from her machine and carry it (or have the office boy carry it) to the communications center, where it would be transmitted.

It gets even better: You can transmit and receive different messages at the same time on a teleprinter. The sending functions of the unit - the keyboard and the paper tape punch - are not normally internally connected to the printer. If your network is a "duplex" network - most were - pressing a key will send a letter to the central computer...which will send it back. A simplex printer won't do that.

[Tab]

12. I'm always fascinated by this stuff

I know that when I worked at a radio station, we had an AP printer, which would have been RO, and on whatever regular basis (probably hourly) I'd rip off the recent transmits and read the news.

I also personally used a combination teletype/paper tape thing for communication with a specific computer, but not a telex itself.

I do know 10 CPS is more than one usually types; I was thinking more of receiving and/or if it saved the message up and sent it at the end - but thinking about it, they didn't have that capability; that's more of a late 20th-century thing.

It was a joke anyway - once upon a time a 110-baud modem was perfectly adequate (ignoring dial-up/connect times and other stuff) because all we transmitted was text. Once we started transmitting graphics and video the requirements changed dramatically - and that was just choppy or low-grade video. Even now, it sucks bandwidth like crazy (and I used to be a video software engineer), far better than it was, but still not without hiccups.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. "I worked at a radio station, we had an AP printer"

Same here. Used to do the 30 minute Friday 5 pm "drive time" news at my college radio station and will never forget getting the AP feed that came across the teletype announcing that Karen Carpenter had died (about a week and 33 years ago)! We also subscribed to their radio feed and would get their broadcast schedule from the printout so we would know when to record selected audio (on carts) for later broadcast. Now everything is digital. lol

[Tab]

14. We didn't have the AP radio

Any carts were generally internal, either PSAs or ads for other shows and events. A news AP recording would have been classy.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. Classy sure

But you had to be right there at the time the audio feed came out to grab it or you missed it! Needless to say, there were many "missed opportunities".

I did do a ton of PSA and promo recordings though. I still have some old reels (6" and 10&quot that I never got chance to move to cassette before I graduated. One of these days I'd like to get a reel-to-reel unit to listen to them and transfer them (used ones were always so expensive though). Something on the old bucket list.

[byronius]

10. That is a goddamned gorgeous piece of equipment.

Science fiction, in its day.