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corporate ownership of meme sites (update)

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A previous post pondered the provenance of eBaum's WORLD and Cheezburger. Who owns them exactly, and what is the chain of possession from previous owners?

So is Viumbe a Literally subsidiary? Is eBaum in transition between owners with dated website info? Or is Literally the "old" owner? Inquiring meme ghouls want to know.

Thanks to polyaenus for emailing with some additional research. The text below is quoted in full from the email:

First, looking at the Viumbe site, it seems quite dead.
It lists three sites in its media kit pdf and two of them redirect to Ebaumsworld.
@celebremix stopped tweeting in 2012 and @viumbe in 2013.
The sales contact listed in the media kit seems to work somewhere else now.

However, the Ebaumsworld and Cheezburger twitters are still active, run by "EiC" @colbydroscher.

Ebaumsworld was acquired by Handheld Entertainment Inc (ZVUE) in 2007. [link]

Interestingly, Handheld was run by Google cofounder Larry Page's brother.
At first his company made a video/mp3 player called ZVUE, trying to compete with Apple's iPod.

zvue250

I guess this didn't work and they tried to pivot into online media. [link]

Before they made the big purchase of Ebaumsworld, they ran some other sites:
"It offers content through YourDailyMedia.com, FunMansion.com, Putfile.com, Dorks.com, ZVUE.com, and UnOriginal.co.uk Web sites" [link]

ZVUE was eventually suspended from trading in 2014. [link]

I'm not sure how Viumbe got ZVUE's assets but this says it was formed in 2009. [link]

Viumbe "relaunched" Ebaumsworld in 2012. [link]

Viumbe was sold to JoBookit Holdings Limited in 2014 for $2.5 million according to this lawsuit. [link]

"Jobookit develops game changing concepts and dynamic technologies to optimize and ultimately simplify the world of online recruitment."
not sure what that has to do with a meme site.

This guy [twitter] is listed as both the CEO of Jobookit and the Co-owner of Viumbe until it was acquired by Literally Media in 2017. [link]

Literally (founded 2015) acquired Cheezburger in 2016
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cheezburger-acquired-by-literally-media-joining-ebaums-world-as-the-destination-for-reaching-millennial-and-generation-z-audiences-and-the-5-entertainment---humor-destination-according-to-comscore-data-576567001.html
(look at that fucking url lol)

One weird thing is that according to the above link, Cheezburger "joins" Ebaumsworld as being part of Literally Media, in 2016. Yet Filstein's own site and LinkedIn says Literally bought Viumbe in 2017. Confusing.

one last link i found from a bitter content farmer...
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/blogs/why-i-was-fired-from-viumbe/84865523/

Fractalized Nyan Cat

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nyanfract

[hooktube] video (detail of screenshot)

RA (via email): theres a guy on youtube ... manipulating parameters in fractal software. i went to his channel last night and he posted a 'test' of some sort of new texture feature in his software and used the nyan cat in the background as the texture. the end result feels particularly interesting, its a very weird mash up i think.

i should also add ... if you look at his other videos, they are all kind of serious, or he has demos being really helpful teaching how his workflow is. this 'cute' vid kind of caught me by surprise, more so than if the channel was filled with nothing but like funny or silly stuff.

TM (reply): Agreed the mash-up of (trivial) cat and (ominous) 3D borg cube is interesting. The cat improves with all the flipping and spatial permutations. And yes let's hope he doesn't do another 20 like that (with various meme videos).

The nyan cat in the background is blurry (probably enlarged in Firefox!) and then returns to something closer to its original resolution as it shrinks and grows. I suppose fuzzy pixels are needed for the sake of the 3D illusion.

corporate ownership of meme sites

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Like the blogosphere, meme sites are a legacy of the previous decade that were essentially eclipsed by the big corporate "social" silos. In other words, you could experience the meme on "social" without having to go to an originator, or originating aggregator. So the meme sites lost momentum as destinations. (This wasn't the only reason: add uniform boring corporate redesigns and simple exhaustion of the original target audience.) In any case, it makes sense that these old sites would become "properties" that some Silicontrepeneur would try to squeeze "value" from. For the morbidly inclined, the current landscape is confusing, though.

Here, "eBaum's WORLD" is listed as a portfolio company of Literally media:

literallymedia2

What, no funnyjunk or somethingawful?

Clicking the first Literally link takes you to eBaum's WORLD, which shows another company, Viumbe LLC, as owner:

ebaumviumbe

The Viumbe page lists eBaum as a property:

viumbe

So is Viumbe a Literally subsidiary? Is eBaum in transition between owners with dated website info? Or is Literally the "old" owner? Inquiring meme ghouls want to know.

Update: A reader emailed with some answers!

Peter's bonus pays Paul's minimum wage

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Amazon raising its minimum wage was an obvious ploy to reverse the growing realization that the company is The Devil, and it left critics struggling with "yes that's great but..." arguments.
Then this news came out: Amazon eliminates monthly bonuses and stock grants after minimum wage increase (The Verge):

Amazon garnered praise for raising the minimum wage for its hourly workers to $15 yesterday, but the widely-publicized move also came at the expense of monthly bonuses and stock options. The company explained its decision to shift to a new stock purchase program in the announcement blog post yesterday, citing that hourly employees preferred the “predictability and immediacy of cash to RSUs,” or restricted stock units, but the post doesn’t mention the loss of monthly incentives, which Bloomberg reported earlier today.

Several Amazon warehouse employees have criticized the move, stating they would actually be losing thousands in incentive pay. Currently, warehouse workers get two shares of Amazon stock when they’re hired ($1,952.76 per share as of writing), and an additional stock option each year. After the changes take effect, the RSU program will be phased out for stocks that vest in 2020 and 2021, and it will be replaced with a direct stock purchase plan by the end of next year.

An Amazon warehouse worker told The Verge via email that the news was devastating to fulfillment employees, many of whom depend on their RSU and VCP (variable compensation pay, a performance-based monthly bonus program) incentives on top of their hourly wages. VCP incentives, which are dependent on good attendance and hitting productivity targets, could get Amazon workers an 8 percent monthly bonus, and a 16 percent bonus during the peak November and December seasons.

Perhaps some of the reluctant praise would have been stanched if this sneaky maneuver had been better known.

bad internet trend no. 23499

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Using twitter to write long essays. Matt Stoller's long-form writing often shines but the choppiness of these tweet-compressed bullet points throws off his rhythm.
Also, his argument -- that B. Kavanaugh's whining has more to do with being a spoiled aristocrat than a sexist white male -- probably isn't worth 20 numbered tweets. It's like fighting about whether someone is a neoliberal or a nazi.