Monday, May 3, 2004

PHILADELPHIA, NEW YORK, CHICAGO (AP): In an acquisition poised to rival AOL's purchase of TimeWarnerTurner for the incompatibility of its parts and Seagram's purchase of Universal Pictures for the potential for mixing refreshing beverages with mediocre popular culture, the owners of the Throwing Things weblog have purchased all assets of Live from Five Minutes Ago, including all future rights to the intellectual production (if any) of Matthew Marcotte, its founder, through a hostile takeover maneuver.

Crafty lawyer that he was, Marcotte had inserted a 'poison pill' as part of his stock agreement -- namely, that anyone who took him over also would be forced to acquire the assets of Alex Gordon's popular A List A Day weblog, in the hopes that the combined volume of pop culture nonsense would sabotage any future acquisitions. Throwing Things founder Adam Bonin was heard to make loud harumphing sounds, before agreeing to the terms.

The newly-merged website, to be titled A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago (for a day or two, anyway), will be hosted at http://throwingthings.blogspot.com, with the other sites maintaining their vast archives on their original Web pages.

According to Marcotte, "The merger will create a combined entity with a net worth of approximately 0.0000001% of the planning upcoming initial public offering of Google. Oddly, this will still make all of us instant billionaires."

"It's closer to a cabal than a conspiracy," said Bonin. "Well, it's certainly not a capital-c Conspiracy, because none of us are libertarian law professors. Also, none of us are smart enough to do that thing where everyone posts in different colors."

"My hope is can inject the same kind of energy and excitement into this combined blog that cousin Oliver brought to the Brady household," Gordon says.

The move greatly increases the site's diversity. Whereas before Throwing Things solely focused on the cultural tastes of overeducated urban liberal males in their early 30s, the new site will provide the much-needed perspective of groups previously underrepresented in the blogosphere: overeducated urban liberal males in their mid 20s and mid 30s.

What will the new site look like? More of the same, but all in one place. Alex will still do the lists; Matt will continue to survey the culture with his trenchant eye, as will Adam, plus his sidekicks Isaac and Phil will . . . what is it exactly they do, again?

[On a personal note, I just want to say how happy I am about all this. Alex and Matt are two bloggers whose work I've always enjoyed, and I think we're going to have a lot of fun here together. -- Adam]

No comments:

Post a Comment