IAC Sells Its 23/6 Comedy Site

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Politically tinged comedy site 236.com is sticking to just one parent company.

IAC (Nasdaq: IACI) is selling its interest in the site to fellow stakeholder Huffington Post, according to PaidContent.org. IAC and Huffington launched the site in November 2007, hoping to cash in on the election buzz. That proved a good match, given Huffington's growing political clout at the time and IAC's existing comedy properties like College Humor.

During that month, IAC mastermind Barry Diller also announced his plans to split his new-media empire into five distinct companies. The IAC breakup would seem to signal that Diller was trying to scale back, but the opposite was actually happening. Shortly after launching 236.com -- a pun on the popular term "24/7" -- the company introduced its Rushmore Drive search engine. The split actually gave Diller the opportunity to break down his company into bite-sized specialties, like Ticketmaster (Nasdaq: TKTM) for event ticketing and Tree.com (Nasdaq: TREE) for its out-of-favor housing and loan-related properties. 

However, now that the elections have come and gone, there might not be an appetite for political news -- and mockery -- for another three years. In other words, it makes sense for IAC to hand over the site to a political outlet that could use the extra traffic.

"236.com is HuffPost's sister site," reads the site's description on Huffington Post. "But we're not HuffPost's glamorous sister. 236.com is more like the funny sister who gets sent to her room for telling dirty jokes at the dinner table. And then wakes up the next day and tells four more during breakfast."

Internet portals have been scaling back on their properties lately, so the time is right for IAC to send the little sister packing. Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) axed social networking site Kickstart last month, shortly after euthanizing Yahoo! Mash. A New York Times story over the weekend waxed positive about AOL's realignment with more than 75 niche sites like Engadget and TMZ -- with plans to add 30 more this year -- though Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) online arm has also had its share of cutbacks lately. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) even shut down its Lively virtual world last month.

Focused portals? That can't be a bad thing, especially at a time when ad-revenue growth is becoming more and more suspect.