If the high-pitched screech of a dial-up modem brings back fond memories, you may be delighted to learn that Verizon Media is being renamed as Yahoo after being sold to a private equity firm. Verizon Media bought Yahoo in 2017 and AOL in 2015 for a combined $9 billion but the current sale values them at around half that amount. Oopsies.
Databook collects public data about companies, analyzes it to identify opportunities, and feeds these into company CRM systems along with recommended messages for target individuals and accounts. They just raised a $16 million Series A with investors including Microsoft and Salesforce venture funds.
Maybe it’s National Stick to Your Knitting Day: Meredith Corporation is selling its local TV stations for $2.7 billion, leaving it free to concentrate on its core publishing brands, which include People, Better Homes & Gardens, and Allrecipes. Those may sound old-fashioned but Meredith already makes more from digital advertising than print advertising. This might be a good time to sell: TV viewing time dropped 9% in the first quarter of this year and is expected to fall further.
I can’t bring myself to lead with yet another generative AI story, so we’ll start instead with this Forrester report for Airtable, which found that organizations have lots of software applications. The average is 367 in use at large organizations, with teams using an average of 45 daily and individuals using an average of 52 weekly. No surprise here but a good reminder of why data integration is so important.