Huffington Post Buys Other Half of 23/6
The Huffington Post has acquired IAC’s stake in 236.com, the comedy blog and video site it had co-launched with IAC in November 2007, according to a memo issued today.
23/6, which wasn’t much of a brand on its own, will now become HuffPo’s comedy section. What with IAC reorganizing itself, it was widely known that 23/6 could be shut down or sold. Meanwhile, HuffPo is working to build other topics besides politics, now that the election is over. The site also has cash to burn; it recently raised $25 million in new funding.
We weren’t fans of 23/6 at launch, but we loved its video incarnation of Get Your War On, and the show won top prize at one of our community-judged Pier Screenings last summer. The site had also teamed up with Funny or Die for a joint project last year.
It must have been a daunting task for the last year or so to run a comedy site for 23/6’s two somewhat humorless masters. As 23/6 says on its soon-to-be-updated masthead,
236.com is a co-production between the gigantic, vaguely Death Star-like IAC, and The Huffington Post, a progressive news hub where outraged people go in order to get more outraged before going to have dinner at Nobu.
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[...] “Move forward with an open mind, but don’t let your brain fall out,” said Duncan Mitchell co-founder of Someecards, the online greeting card site that specializes in wry humor, in another lecture. He explained that he subscribes to the “mullet theory” of web content: Similar to the haircut, a web site enterprise has to be “business in the front, party in the back.” The idea is applicable to new media sites like the Huffington Post that need to establish credibility first and foremost, and then deliver appealing content. HuffPo’s brand is built around hard news and political opinion, but it also draws in an audience with its lifestyle and green columns as well as humorous news items from recently-acquired 23/6. [...]
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