Point Davis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ziff Davis ( ZD for short ) is an American media company. It publishes various magazines and operates Internet offers, both mainly in the areas of information technology and video games . In 2008, Ziff Davis Media still operated 15 websites and published 3 magazines, as well as events and direct marketing campaigns. The publications and websites were marketed in 45 countries and in 13 languages ​​and reached an audience of around 26 million users.

Headquartered in New York City , with offices and test labs in San Francisco and Woburn, Massachusetts . The group leader is Ziff Davis Holdings Inc. , the largest sub-company is Ziff Davis Media Inc.

history

The company was founded in 1927 in Chicago by William B. Ziff senior (1898–1953) and Bernard G. Davis (1906–1972) . Originally, and for the longest period in the company's history, the company published hobby magazines for high-advertising markets such as: B. for cars, photography and since the 1950s also for electronics.

Due to high indebtedness, Ziff Davis Media Inc. announced the opening of bankruptcy proceedings under Chapter 11 of the United States Code as part of a comprehensive restructuring on March 5, 2008 , with the continuation of business activities.

In June 2010 it was announced that the former Time manager Vivek Shah and the Boston equity investment company Great Hill Partners had acquired the publisher for an undisclosed price.

Computer magazine sector

Since 1980, Ziff Davis has specialized primarily in computer magazines and internet magazines and has grown into one of the largest publishers in this field. Numerous websites have been derived from the established magazine brands over the years. In 1989, Ziff Davis founded the ZiffNet division , which later became the ZDNet Internet service . With the outgoing dotcom bubble in 2000 ZDNet was at the media company CNET Networks Inc. sold. The purchase price is said to have been around 1.6 billion US dollars.

Ziff Davis's well-known publications in Germany were PC Professionell and the magazine Internet Professionell, which was launched in 1995 under the title pl @ net . The publishing division was sold to the US investment house Willis Stein and Partners in 1999 and from there to the media group VNU in 2000 , later to 3i . Both magazines have been discontinued.

Broadcasting sector

Since the mid-1970s, Ziff Davis operated various radio programs, first under the name ZDTV, later TechTV . This division was sold in 2001 to the investment company Vulcan Ventures of Microsoft co- founder Paul Allen . In the summer of 2007, ZD sold the Enterprise division for US $ 160 million to financial investor Insight Venture Partners .

In 1994, the Japanese entrepreneur Masayoshi Son (founder and CEO of SoftBank ) initially acquired control of the Ziff Davis tradeshows for around US $ 200 million , and in 1995 he acquired the rest of the company, which had initially been a financial investor, for over US $ 2 billion.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Press release Ziff Davis ( Memento of March 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Ziff Davis sold again. heise.de, accessed on June 7, 2010 .
  3. ↑ Cnet To Buy Ziff Davis . InformationWeek . July 19, 2000. Retrieved July 17, 2019.

Web links