Special Announcement – Just Laugh Acquired by AOL Time Warner
NEW YORK (Just Laugh) – In a very special press conference earlier this morning, it was made public that media giant AOL Time Warner has successfully completed the acquisition of Just Laugh Productions, Inc., a dot-com startup from early 2000 which specializes in various mediums targeting the humor industry. It’s largest by-product, Just Laugh magazine, syndicates humor columns and comics from some of the industry’s top names and is currently read by millions worldwide.
Although it is unclear how exactly this will affect Just Laugh’s immense audience, Editor-in-Chief Scott Sevener reports that, “I’m very confident that, if anything, this acquisition will only lead to strengthening our position in the market. Everyone here at Just Laugh looks forward to continuing to produce the Internet’s best humor. We’ve got some fantastic projects planned for the near future and it’s only going to be getting better from here on out…”
Some analysts view this purchase as simply another move by the Internet titan to buy-up its competition, and some long-time fans of Just Laugh magazine fear that the end of their favorite online humor publication could be near, as it’s unfortunately quite common for severe budget and staffing cuts to whittle new acquisitions down to nothing in cases like this, yet Webmaster Robert Henderson sees a different side to the story.
“Yeah, the magazine was doing great, pulling down a few million hits each year, but with this deal with AOL finally coming through, I can see our readership going through the roof in the following months! I mean, think about it – AOL already boasts a massive 35 million members worldwide, and with talks of Just Laugh becoming AOL’s primary humor feature in their entertainment section, there’s no telling how many new readers we’ll be seeing come shortly! I’m really excited about it all.”
Representatives from the merged web teams between AOL Time Warner and Just Laugh Productions tell us that the complete integration will not be complete for another several weeks, but any actual changes will be minute and most previous readers won’t notice any differences whatsoever. Beginning Tuesday, AOL members will be able to access all of Just Laugh’s content using the Keyword: Just Laugh command. Though previous acquisitions have led to the untimely deaths of many of the web’s favorite gathering places, at least we know that in this case, whatever happens, we’ll be going out with a few good laughs…
