Starting off as a digital media blog by Pete Cashmore in 2005, Mashable quickly went on to gain international fame and was bought over by American publishing and digital company Ziff Davis in 2017.
Back in 2015, the then executive director for EMEA at Mashable Ben Maher told Communicate, “The good thing about us [Mashable] is that we are global so we don’t necessarily need to create a Middle East version, but we do want create more content around the region. Whether that’s in English or Arabic remains to be seen but we can make sure that we provide interesting perspectives on the stuff happening here, such as the satellite universities, startups coming out of Lebanon and what’s happening in Dubai Media City.”
Now, three years later Mashable is launching its MENA edition across 12 countries through a partnership between Ziff Davis and Fork Media.
The company claims to reach 70 million unique content visitors per month worldwide, including a social media following of 28 million.
The regional edition will curate and localize existing global content in addition to original content produced for the region covering culture, entertainment, technology and automotive.
Mashable MENA will launch with an English language website expanding to include Arabic content – and ad products – from the first quarter of 2019.
The Middle East editorial and sales team will sit within Fork Media, which launched in GCC three years ago and is the parent company of media brands such as Curly Tales Dubai
The editorial team will be led by managing editor Ankush Chibber who was most recently the managing editor of Inc. Arabia.
