I Call Shenanigans! - Nice Try

It's a crazy world we live in these days that some people believe whatever is in a "press release". Today, the prankster's favorite day, a prank was attempted on the stock photography industry.

Norway and the US are among the countries that celebrate April Fools Day, and one Norwegian company has taken to spoofing those in the US with the "news" that Crestock has aquired Corbis for $625 million. In fact, they even list it in their "news room" section, here. Yet, a review of the Corbis news room, here, shows no news reported. Me suspects tom foolery all around!

Biggest give-away? At the bottom of the Crestock release is reads "Additional information concerning these and other risk factors is contained in Crestock's and Corbis's most recently filed Forms 10-K and 10-Q." Yet, neither company files these forms.

Other things like typos "The revenue for 2006 was $251 million." Who cites two-year old revenue? In fact, Corbis doesn't even cite it's own revenue! Further, "...not the least because of the growth..."; "...but a new head quarter will be established..."; and the biggest laugh of all- "it's simply 'non stocky stock photography'..." even I know that that's a stupid thing to say. (By the way, for all you who constantly critisize my typos, I recognize the irony in my pointing out the typos of others!)

UPDATE: While not to be believed, supposedly, Corbis was contacted by Crestock to say their site was hacked (yeah, right) and someone posted this "news" blurb, and they haven't been able to get rid of the blurb all day. Mmmm Hmmm. What idiot writes site code and then loses sysop access? I've been writing code since 1984, and that was a basic principle of every program I ever wrote - don't get locked out of your own code.

Methinks Corbis is enjoying this little trickery. Maybe I should have titled this post - "I call Shenkanigans!"

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