After publishing my previous post about blog spam, I spotted this news item in my WP Admin Dashboard:
On behalf of the WordPress community, I’m proud to announce a merger we’ve had on our minds since the first time we saw Dean Allen’s dog — WordPress and Textpattern are joining forces to create the greatest CMSMS ever, WordPattern. “WordPress and Textpattern: Two great tastes that taste great together.†As with any great union, there […]
From that item, you go to a well-written soliloquy that introduces a vision for the future:
WordPattern represents a revolution in weblog technology, a paradigm shift for the emerging army of citizen journalists, diarists and technologists known as bloggers.
Still in its early stages, this new application brings together for the first time the best of both worlds: Textpattern’s legendary documentation, the style and sophistication of WordPress, and the community spirity that helped make the two the successes they are today.
Read on, and discover our vision for the future…
A stunning move. But wait! It’s April the 1st! Is this real, or is it an April Fool’s Day joke? As I write this, nothing on the TextPattern website.
If it is true, then excuse my “But wait!” question. There are quite a few plausible-sounding announcements being made today…
[Update] It is an April Fool’s joke – see the comments.
It’s a hoax, of course, but a pretty elaborate one! The WordPattern homepage has a link to the only WordPattern site – http://andryshuzain.com/ – which features the text:
It is a clever one, Dave. I didn’t click on that link (note to self: always click on links!). If it hadn’t been April 1 today, I think I would have been quite convinced this was a genuine announcement.
Of course, if I had clicked, what would have given the game away is the mis-spelling of Coruscant :)
I have the ‘corruscant’ thingy fixed now..
It’s a good joke, really. I put it on new location now : http://andryshuzain.com/wordpattern
Life goes on :D
Andry, congrats to you and everyone involved for such a well thought-out, implemented and very good joke!
Mind you, that vision looks highly compelling.
Blogging4business…
In London on Tuesday April 4th? Why not come along to the Blogging 4 Business conference in Grosvenor Square….
[…] It also makes you think that, when you see a spoof announcement, you should perk up your eyes and ears and pay closer attention to a company as it may give you a clue about some thinking, if not intentions, that may materialize into something interesting. […]