Edinburgh, UK, April 1, 2011 — Cheezburger (www.cheezburger.com), the Internet publisher best known for popularizing LOLcats, FAILS, and other Internet memes, today announced it has acquired Charlie's Diary, the authoritative and amusing weblog of science fiction author Charles Stross.

Created by Hugo-winning SF author Charles Stross, Charlie's Diary is dedicated to giving people an overdose of the florid imagination of a science fiction writer who gets bored easily and has too much time on his hands. Over the past decade Charlie's Diary has trolled the internet for lulz at the expense of space enthusiasts, trekkies, sad-faced clowns, and proletarian chew-toys, in the process delivering a spectacular Google pagerank and accreting a vibrant community of snarky nerds, general-purpose pedants and drive-by spammers.

"I'm excited to see the Charlie's Diary community joining the Cheezburger community," said Ben Huh, CEO and founder of Cheezburger. "Since Cheezburger is the playground of choice for millions of Internet culture fans, the addition of regular commenters such as Jonathon Vos Post and Heteromeles is a natural complement for our community. Now, in addition to delivering 5 minutes of happiness through I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, Memebase, and The Daily What, we can host interminable flame wars about whether ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and the prospects for saving the environment by installing a molten thorium salt reactor in every basement."

"Thanks to the amazing community, Charlie's Diary has become one of the Internet's top five science fiction weblogs," said Stross. "It's taken a decade and I'm all burned up, so I've finally decided to monetize you bitches and cash out." To aid in this process Stross intends to throw the gates open for guest bloggers to contribute their content for a small consideration. "Ben Huh is enthusiastic about providing user analytics and behavioural advertising for Charlie's Diary, and we expect this will enable us to recoup some of the investment in time and energy the blog has cost me during the ten year bootstrap process." Charlie will continue to market his science fiction under the brand name Charles Stross™ for the next five years, at which point the Charles Stross™ brand will be wholly transfered to the Cheezburger Network intellectual property portfolio and the author formerly known as Stross will rebrand and launch under a non-conflicting identity.

Media Reaction

The media response to word of the Cheezburger Network's expansion into the world of science fiction blogging has been mixed."This is just the kind of move you'd expect of that back-stabbing mercenary Stross," said John Scalzi, "selling his reader community down the river. We'd never sell Ghlaghghee to Cheezburger Inc.," he added, stroking his unfeasibly hairy pussy: "now where did I tape the bacon?" Teresa Neilsen Hayden was more sanguine: "we at Making Light are open to reasonable offers, as long as they are compatible with our coverage of hamsters." The bacterial colony formerly known as Peter Watts declined to comment.

About Stross

Charles Stross, 46, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The winner of two Locus Reader Awards and winner of the 2005 and 2010 Hugo awards for best novella, Stross's works have been translated into over twelve languages. He is also the proprietor of Charlie's Diary, a weblog dedicated to investigating the pressing question of whether there is anything better in life than drawing on the sole of your slippers with a biro instead of going to the pub on a Saturday night. Charlie's Diary boasts a readership of over 150,000 cantankerous geeks who post over a thousand argumentative comments per month. The diary has been a vanity project and white elephant ever since its inception, receiving revenue solely from the Amazon referrals program until the author deleted all his links to it in a fit of pique.

About Cheezburger

Cheezburger, the company which publishes popular sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, Memebase, and The Daily What, is one of the largest online humor publishers in the world where millions of people come every month to get their 5-minutes of happiness. Cheezburger counts a passionate fan base of 17.5 million people who upload more than 500,000 pictures and videos as well as view 400 million pages and 110 million videos each month. The company has been profitable since its inception with revenue from advertising, traditional media publishing including books, and merchandising.