FAT CATS

[serfdom]

Monday, April 02, 2007 - April Fools

This past weekend I took part in what was supposed to be a simple April Fools gag. But through a series of coincidental circumstances and odd timing, it came together into what some are calling the best tech April fools joke of 2007.

I don't know if it was the best, but it certainly had to be the most elaborate.

Here's the story.

Michael Arrington of mega-blog, Techcrunch, came up with the idea of announcing that Techcrunch had acquired Fuckedcompany.com Techcrunch is the best-known site announcing new "Web 2.0" companies, while FC chronicled the fall of "Web 1.0." The joke being that Web 2.0 is "officially" over.

We discussed it and Michael thought it would be more believable if I corroborated the story on FC and Pud.com. Sounded fun, so I made a white version of the site with a new logo in the Techcrunch font and posted the story here.

But then the weird part. Two months earlier I was contacted by a man named James Martin, asking if I was interested in selling Fuckedcompany and some of my other popular-but-neglected properties. I said "sure" and signed an agreement with him, but then hadn't heard much since.

Anyway, this past weekend it all came together. Apparently James had been busy, contacting people about buying the sites, and getting some press for it. Here's the first article, on Wired.com. It was posted on March 29, two days before the Techcrunch/FC announcement.

Then other press start to pick up on the "FC is for sale" story. Then the day before the joke was supposed to go live, another popular Silicon Valley blog, Valleywag, reports that FC would be the perfect acquisition for Techcrunch.

The FC acquisition story goes live on Techcrunch. We were going to issue a real press release to the business wires, but then the joke was getting so much press that a release would be overkill.

Many people were confused... if this were an April fools joke, how did we get Wired, Valleywag, and others to play along days before the joke? And with everyone saying FC and Techcrunch should belong together anyway, is it really that funny?

Anyway, odd timing, sort of a clusterfuck, but nobody got hurt. Except maybe all the people who fell for it.

Sorry! :)

http://www.pud.com/2007/04/april-fools.html