Mar
31
Elaborate April Fools hoax with BikeBiz.com, the San Jose Business Journal and Specialized all in on it? See BikeBiz’s news flash on the historic announcement on the Northern California bike company here.
The dead giveaway is the quote from supposed GM VP, “Flora Lopi” – an anagram of the words April fool.
Carlton at BikeBiz sent his news flash out just after midnight in the UK, so he’s safe, but what about the SJBJ sending there’s out on the 31st? Did they jump the gun or did they fall for it (like I was for a bit I’ll admit)?
If it were true, that would be quite the little family of brands: GMC, Buick, Pontiac, Hummer, Specialized…
At least we got an Interbike mention circulating out there.
Update: Looks like the hoax is more elaborate: the url given for the SJBC is fake. A certain bike blogger has been pretty sneaky. Nice job…
Comments
2 Responses to “GM Buys Specialized?”
Well, BRAIN wasn’t taken in and nor was David on the Fredcast. But the San Jose Business Journal fake site almost threw everybody (one bike news site did fall for the spoof, temporarily).
Kudos for Fritz for a clever bit of coding.
Of course, it helped that I was able to do the story on April 1st in UK when it was still March 31st in US.
The folks at Morgan Hill were still in the office when the story broke. Thanks for that post, Rich
And thank you to Carlton — this couldn’t have happened without him and his connections.