CollegeHumor.com, Connected Ventures and IAC

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It was announced today that Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp purchased a controlling interest in Connected Ventures, the parent company of CollegeHumor.com, BustedTees, Vimeo, etc.

I am very lucky to personally know the four founders of Connected Ventures. When you think about the company that my friends are joining... this is a REALLY BIG DEAL.

Now please allow me to brag about my friends for a few minutes. Let me state now that I had absolutely nothing to do with their success.

First, to all of the haters who think "I could have done that!" and "It's just pictures of beer cans and shamings.".... You're wrong. Just think about all of the things that you never see that come with running a website with 200 million pageviews per month. Things like DDoS attacks, content distribution deals, partnerships with other media outlets, investments from outsiders, lawsuits from sorority girls, and patents on merchandise.

I will make a bet that the founders spend upwards of 80% of their time on things that the public will never interface with. It happens all of the time in start-ups that blow up and nobody knows.

So for all of the things that everybody sees - like pictures that make me laugh and Vimeo friends that make my heart warm - I thank Josh, Ricky, Zach and Jakob. It is still a free website.

There is no way to characterize these guys, but I will do my best to give them each a little honest compliment below.

Josh Abramson has always been the elusive CollegeHumor co-founder. He has only written on CollegeHumor.com once or twice. Josh does not keep a web page on the public internet. I hardly know him - but he plays for keeps and he has actually punched someone from Zilo in the face (REDACTED).

Just like Jay Z used his hip hop rapping skills to open white-collar doors, Ricky Van Veen used his humor and email forwards to break the big time. Now Ricky manages a stable of talented writers. He also is in charge of the company's Hollywood movie production with Paramount. In 2002 Ricky produced a TV show with some interviews that I did with the cast of 'American Pie 2'. My interview with Eugene Levy, which was the best part of the whole weekend in Malibu, was entirely coached by Ricky. He has a good eye for what college kids enjoy. That is a compliment today.

What Zach Klein and Jakob Lodwick did to CollegeHumor is like what the Miracle Grow commercials promise from plants. Jakob helped add a link exchange program, automated much of the back-end content integration, and most recently launched Vimeo. Today he is a project manager and keeps others in the company from over-engineering things.

Zach Klein knows me better than anybody else. He was my roommate for two years in college. Zach brings a sense of design to CollegeHumor - and he has been instrumental in launching BustedTees and growing the bottom line. Zach worked for the company out of his dorm room our senior year at WFU when all of the other guys were in San Diego. See the bevel and gradient in the CollegeHumor logo? Notice the nice rounded corners on the home page, the readable OnMouseOvers and the perfectly balanced DIVs? If you didn't notice those things, that's fine. Because like good architecture, sometimes the best design just looks natural.

Congratulations, guys. This wasn't luck and this isn't a bubble. You deserve it all.