March 31st, 2007
TechCrunch to announce it has acquired F***edCompany.com
Mike Arrington has published a blog post saying tomorrow he'll be announcing that TechCrunch has acquired the iconic Dot Com crash website F***ed Company – launched in 2000 to chronicle the failure of troubled companies that were started during the boom.
As part of the announcement, Arrington says that the websites for TechCrunch and F***ed Company will eventually merge:
Many of our readers still enjoy reading about new startups, and we won’t stop covering them. But we will likely move new startup coverage, which will be a secondary consideration going forward, to a new blog over time. TechCrunch and FuckedCompany will begin to mirror each other’s content, and at the appropriate time the brands and sites will be merged.
The reason for such a "move" is that we're fast approaching the Dot Com Bust 2.0:
The market moves in cycles, and its clear that we are at the tail end of the current boom… The TechCrunch DeadPool, where we track failed startups, is growing exponentially. If the failure rate of startups continues to grow this fast, we will be at a point where failures will begin to outnumber new funded startups. Since 9/10 startups fail, by focusing on the negative we will have much more content for the site.
Q: Hasn't Arrington always denied we're in a boom?
A: Yes
Q: Doesn't he love covering startups?
A: Of course he does.
Q: So what's changed?
A: Nothing!
The blog post (dated March 31st) opens with:
Tomorrow we will announce that we have acquired Philip “Pud” Kaplan’s F***edCompany.com in a stock for assets transaction.
Tomorrow being… April fools day.
Update: Mathew Ingram is onto it too, but Dave Winer was duped.
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
