The company that owns Mashable and IGN today went public in 1999 as JFAX.COM, a service that sent your faxes to your email. JFAX was founded in December 1995 to let people get faxes and voice messages over the internet. A subscriber got a phone number, and anything sent to it arrived in their inbox. Its co-chairman, Jaye Muller, was 26 at the IPO. In July 1999, an internet company with recurring subscription fees was an easy sell.

One Number, Every Message

Jaye Muller and John Rieley founded JFAX in 1995. Business travelers then carried laptops but could not carry their fax machines. JFAX solved that with a local number in many cities and a server that turned each fax or voicemail into an email attachment. Richard Ressler became CEO and co-chairman in 1997. The bet was that millions of small offices would pay a few dollars a month for a fax line without a machine.

From JFAX to Ziff Davis

JFAX.COM priced at $9.50 a share in July 1999 and listed on Nasdaq. It soon renamed itself j2 Global and bought rivals such as eFax, building a large online fax business. j2 later used that cash to buy media and software brands, including the publisher Ziff Davis. In 2021 it spun off the fax business as Consensus Cloud Solutions and took the Ziff Davis name. The same company still trades on Nasdaq as ZD.

Cover: The Love Letter, Suzuki Harunobu. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a woman reading a love letter (messages delivered).