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Pastimes : Business Wire Falls for April Fools Prank, Sues FBNers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhild who wrote (3534)	11/21/1999 12:17:00 AM
From: Arcane Lore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3795

In this particular case, the faked news release was purportedly from PRNewswire rather than BusinessWire. Yahoo subsequently deleted the faked release. However, there is still a copy of it on RB: From Yahoo Board: NEWS OUT!!!! AOL - BIDS DEAL, by: jag_98_ (M/Chicago, IL) 15878 of 15886 ANDREW you are the MAN, thanks for the heads up.!!!! TORONTO, July 8 /PRNewswire/ - Internet service provider America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) said on Thursday it signed a four-year, $89 million strategic alliance with bid.com Inc. (Nasdaq:BIDS - news), a popular Internet auction company. AOL said the pact, expected to roll out across the five AOL brands this fall, will bring bid.com's specially programmed auction information, services and other resources to AOL and CompuServe's combined membership of 19 million members. As part of the alliance, AOL will receive fully vested and performance-based warrants to purchase shares in bid.com. The partnership will use AOL's sales force of over 600 to build advertising and e-commerce opportunities across all bid.com sites and those of its affiliates as well as supporting new product and service launches. Shares of bid.com closed Wednesday at 7-31/32, while AOL shares closed up 3-1/8 to 125 Wendsday on the New York Stock Exchange ragingbull.com As was noted on Yahoo soon after jag_98_'s post, the press release was modeled after a drkoop press release two days earlier which read in part: AMERICA ONLINE AND DRKOOP.COM ANNOUNCE FOUR-YEAR, $89 MILLION STRATEGIC ALLIANCE [...]Through the partnership, drkoop.com will be the most expansive, premier health content partner across five AOL brands, providing AOL and CompuServe's combined membership of 19 million members -- as well as the millions more visitors to AOL.COM, Netscape Netcenter and Digital City -- with consumer-focused resources on hundreds of health topics. The companies expect to rollout drkoop.com content across the AOL brands this fall. Under the agreement, drkoop.com will provide AOL guaranteed payments totaling $89 million over four years. AOL will also receive fully-vested and performance-based warrants to purchase shares in drkoop.com. To support sales efforts for the partnership, drkoop.com will leverage AOL's interactive sales force of over 600 to build advertising and e-commerce opportunities across all drkoop.com and its affiliate sites, as well as to support the rollout of several new products and services throughout the four-year agreement. [...] drkoop.com jag_98_ appears to have added the sentence about the closing prices (commonly included in independent news stories but not normally seen in company press releases) and also appears to need a spell checker ("Wendsday") jag_98_'s later revelation that the release was false is still on Yahoo at: messages.yahoo.com