Firstpost acquires FakingNews.com

The portal will remain as a standalone entity, and founder Rahul Roushan will remain its editor.

Network18's online news portal Firstpost.com has acquired FakingNews.com. FakingNews.com will remain as a standalone entity, and founder Rahul Roushan will remain its editor.

Roushan is now a part of the Firstpost newsroom. In 2012, Roushan was hired by mobile content firm Affle to create content driven ideas for global audiences and also take his own venture, FakingNews.com, to a larger audience. Roushan worked as head, content services at the company and also operated FakingNews.

Speaking about the acquisition, Durga Raghunath, VP, product and exec news producer, Firstpost, states, "Two years after launch, it is beyond doubt that we are a social news product. Our audience through social networks and the interaction on our site have proven, unequivocally, that social relevance will drive our future. Our first step into this future is the acquisition of FakingNews, a site that has defined satire and humour writing in India. Our strong belief is that those who are digital news addicts are also those who have an enormous appetite for satire."

Roushan says that it was clear that the "next step" involved finding the right partners for growth, and growth in the right direction. "Faking News had to continue being a 'news satire' website and not lose its focus. And after a lot of thinking and evaluating various options, I decided to go ahead with Firstpost. Firstpost is not your typical mainstream media outlet. It values its readers, believes in interaction, and doesn't see the 'social media' as its antithesis," Roushan adds.

Rahul Roushan is a former journalist who goes by the pseudonym 'Pagal Patrakar' on FakingNews.com. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, he started as an anchor-cum-bulletin producer with Sahara Samay in September, 2002 and continued till May, 2005. In 2007, during the last year of post graduation, Roushan started a venture known as CricStock.com, which was an online trading game that worked on the principles of a stock market.

In 2008, he launched FakingNews.com, an Indian news satire and humour website which was originally started as a blog and a hobby.

Network18, through its subsidiary Web18, launched Firstpost as a digital newsroom in 2011. Besides Firstpost, the company also runs MoneyControl.com, in.com, Bookmyshow.com, CommoditiesControl.com and PowerYourTrade.com. In the content vertical, the company owns Tech2.com, Cricketnext.com.

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