UPDATE: Okay, okay, the jig is up. Way too many people have been genuinely congratulating me on this “acquisition.” Apparently, I am terrible at this whole April Fool’s thing — or too good at it? — as it’s not supposed to be that believable. Anyway, I’ll leave this up for posterity’s sake, but just to be completely blunt: everything below was completely made up. I love the good folks at Microsoft, but we’re not married. 🙂
Wow, this is surreal. I’m trilled to announce that, yes, Microsoft has acquired chiefmartec.com, as of this morning. I shared the good news with the attendees at the MarTech Conference just moments ago.
Some of you may remember a blog post I wrote last November on what will happen with marketing technology in 2015? I made the bold prediction that Microsoft would make one or more major acquisitions in the marketing technology space this year, spending more than $1 billion in M&A.
However, I never expected that to include my humble, little blog.
While I’ve been asked not to disclose the acquisition price of my blog, I will note that they still have quite a bit of that $1 billion left for other acquisitions. I also scored an Xbox One and a new Surface Pro 3 as a signing bonus.
Microsoft has assured me that I will “mostly” maintain editorial control over this blog and the marketing technology landscape graphic that I produce. There are a few suggestions that they’ve already floated, include a greatly simplified marketing technology landscape:
I’m joking, of course. We’re not going to reduce the landscape down to a single vendor. At least that’s what I was told before signing the letter of intent.
But in all seriousness, Microsoft does believe that this landscape needs to be consolidated. Apparently, the decision to make this deal was directly encouraged by Microsoft founder Bill Gates — a pioneer in software platform ecosystems — who has suggested that we cut down the number of companies included by about 2/3. He stated:
640 marketing technology companies ought to be enough for anybody.
– Bill Gates, Microsoft
I’m also incredibly appreciative of the other luminaries in the industry who offered supportive commentary on this deal:
Technology blog investments are pretty much a no-lose proposition.
– Om Malik, Gigaom
In my experience, the acquisition of tech blogs by major corporations always leads to harmonious outcomes.
– Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
This breakthrough deal significantly consolidates our LUMAscape of tech logo landscapes.
– Terence Kawaja, LUMA Partners
Indeed, Terry and the LUMA team, who served as advisors to this deal, wasted no time in publishing an updated LUMAscape with chiefmartec.com denoted as an acquired company with a dotted red box:
This deal is expected to close by end of today, April 1.
Congratulations! I’ve followed your blog for a while and knew you were on to something. This confirms that we were both right!
Darn it!!! I almost went the whole day without falling for anything.
Scott – so happy for you. This is gonna be fun! If MS wants to share the wealth with the remaining $B, throw our hat into the ring to make it into their marketing eco-system. We wont get greedy like you. We’ll only take the Xbox One just to juice up the deal 🙂
All the best.
Jeff
Ha! You almost got me. 😉
Awesome that April brings the news that humble blogs can now be billion dollar acquisition targets (approx)! I also appreciate that the landscape map is now so much simpler and maybe we can remove the blown up previous version we use to carpet the office just so we could see where we might possibly want to be! Congrats.
Brilliant!!! Can’t wait to see the consolidated LUMAscape of tech logo landscapes.
April Fools
April Fool’s?
“Apparently, I am terrible at this whole April Fool’s thing — or too good at it?”
Too good. You are supposed to fool some people some of the time :).
Nice April fools Scott.
Congrats! And all the best for the future!
You know, it’s not a bad idea. Adobe is to CMO.com as is to MarTech. I could see you buying your own private island by the end of the year.
Sry supposed to be a (blank) in there
You had me.