It began as farce; now it ends in tragedy. CNET is abandoning Consumating, the dating site it bought in December 2005. It has since lost interest in maintaining the dating site which Ben Brown launched as a satire — something to do with its top line being a parody of actual revenues. Consumating's official shut down is March 15. Feel free to publicly mourn.
Clarification: These are not for me to do. These are for you to do.
Ben Brown, founder of up-and-coming dating site Consumating, scored a starring role in the Independent Film Channel's SXSW 2006 retrospect. The IFC's online film, Behind the Badge, covers this year's music, film, and interactive fests at Austin's South by Southwest convention. Ben does a stellar job representing the geeks — and by "stellar" I mean that he gets sloshed and shouts "woohoo" a lot.
Wired News runs a trend story (journalism rule #42: three weak stories make a trend story) on antisocial networking. The tipping point: Full-blown parody site Snubster. It's the Hot New Joke (and by "new" I mean "dated as 'I'm Rick James, bitch'") that's turning into a healthy little community. It's not the first joke-cum-business.
Online matchmaking is just like the real world: shit happens. The Wall Street Journal points out a few failures and the new effort to perfect it — we can do it better with TECHNOLOGY — from eHarmony, True, and Match.com. And the goal is always marriage.
Great party list for SXSWers tonight. Start at the Lifehacker party, hosted by our slick big sister, at The Side Bar (that's 602 East 7th). From 9 to 11, drinks will flow and Gawker Media stars Joel Johnson (the Gizmodo/Consumerist/Gawker-tech-group genius) and Gina Trapani (the aforementioned Lifehacker's lead) will entertain. You might even glimpse some of Gawker's behind-the-scenes folks.
