The sad news:
Consumating is shutting down on 15 March. I love that online dating site, and found it an unending source of geeky topics about inconsequential things and of thought-provoking questions about basically nothing. I’m bereaved.
Valleywag.com writes:
It began as farce; now it ends in tragedy. CNET is abandoning Consumating, the dating site it bought in December 2005. It has since lost interest in maintaining the dating site which Ben Brown launched as a satire — something to do with its top line being a parody of actual revenues. Consumating’s official shut down is March 15. Feel free to publicly mourn. (dated 15 February 2008)
Andy Baio was one of the first to catch the news:
Just received word moments ago that Consumating, the niche dating community acquired by CNET in December 2005, will be shutting down next month. In the wake of the sale of Webshots to American Greetings, it appears that CNET couldn’t find a buyer for the site and is no longer interested in maintaining it. (dated 8 February 08)
Andy Arnott, our regular reader, writes:
This was actually a pretty cool site, one of the few I liked. It had a fresh approach. I think what really happened was that there was little to no promotion of the site, and I think the name was a little iffy (sort of like Collaboradate). It’s creative, but hard to remember.
Starting a dating site, and getting it popular is no easy task, even for a big corporation. (dated 15 February 2008)
I already begun writing a review of this cool site for posting here. 
The happy news:
San Francisco based HotOrNot, founded by James Hong and Jim Young in October 2000, has been acquired for $20 million dollars.
San Francisco based HotOrNot, founded by James Hong and Jim Young in October 2000, has been acquired, we’ve heard from multiple sources.
The buyers are investors connected with Avid Life Media [Toronto, Canada], and paid somewhere around $20 million for the site. Hong and and Young have been taking money out of the very profitable business all along the way – which we reported was another $20 million or in May 2007. HotOrNot never raised outside funding.
The investors are creating a new company, called HotOrNot Media (new site coming soon), and they may be acquiring more properties as well. TechCrunch, dated 11 February 2008
Congratulations, James and Jim! 
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