David Vivero

IAC/InterActiveCorp just announced the launch of 23/6, a comedy site that resembles the Onion, but seems a little bit better. Instead of being completely fake, the site has a “Daily Show”-like coverage of actual events during the week. In fact, many of the writers for the site come from The Daily Show and The Huffington Post. I’ve officially added it to my list of regular news sources, though they only cover “some of the news, most of the time.” (Hence, the 23/6 moniker.)

With ownership of CollegeHumor.com and now 23/6, IAC has some compelling original comedy content online. And is that an example of what’s to come? IAC has been performing poorly in the public markets, mostly because investors are discounting their confusing conglomerate strategy and because of their exposure to mortgages through LendingTree.com. It’s been so bad that Diller has decided to split the company:

“We’ve been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years. And while we’ve created a lot of value, I’ve always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors,” Diller said in a statement. (via AP)  

So it seems the strategy is to leave transaction/e-commerce businesses and poor their efforts into content-based businesses. They spun off Expedia in 2005, and now they’re spinning off LendingTree, Ticketmaster, and HSN. They’re pushing harder on Ask.com, Match.com, Evite, and their original content businesses. To bolster their content efforts, I think they’ll need to make a move into more distribution, by buying a social network and emphasizing their ownership of Ask.com  and Vimeo (a video sharing network).

I’m pretty bullish on the company, because I have a lot of respect for their creative talent, and Diller is going back to his roots (running Fox, Paramount, ABC) to grow a pure media business again. If they successfully split up the company, though, how will they fill up that beautiful Manhattan headquarters designed by Frank Gehry? Hey, I’m always up for a cheap sublet in New York. :)