Aug. 25, 2006
To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Ned Desmond
Re: Office Pirates
“I’m sorry to announce that the Office Pirates project will come to an end September 1, 2006…”
And with that short opening to the memo, it’s done. Office Pirates is kaput. Sitesurfin’ reviewed OfficePirates.com earlier this year. We called it “one of the funniest office mock sites currently on the web.” We compared it favorably to Despair.com and encouraged all sitesurfers 15 and older to take a gander. Alas, maybe not enough of you heeded the call. Here is the rest of the memo:
“This year we’ve approved major investments in our most promising businesses online, including People, CNNMoney, Sports Illustrated, Time, Golf, Entertainment Weekly and This Old House. We are constantly refining that portfolio to ensure we are focused on the most promising projects. Office Pirates was off to a good start — and it is likely to reach nearly 11 million page views this month — but the business still faced a long road. It was a hard decision, but we decided to shift Office Pirates’ resources elsewhere.
Mark Golin and his small team accomplished a great deal in a few months, and we’ve learned a lot along the way about online launches, video production, audience development and, of course, office humor. We’ll use that experience on other projects, and we’ll do our best to find roles for the Office Pirates team across our expanding line-up of digital businesses. Time Inc. will return to online humor early next year with a new initiative from Sports Illustrated. Stay tuned.
–N.D.”
Or maybe not. Maybe Time, Inc. has an itchy trigger-finger and has decided to kill this site prematurely. You decide. Surf on over and let ‘em know what you think. Is it a site worth saving?
