In an attempt to keep up with all of the global barter news, I am today just going to bulletize a smattering of reports that have crossed my desk:
- Tradia CEO, Matthew Humphreys announced that the “national” Tradia convention would be held in the month of May in honor of the celebration of his homosexual love pact with Graham Norris of the Provo, Utah ITEX office. When asked for a comment, Matthew responded, “Not if you are going to be mean. I have had a crush on Graham for a long time and I won’t have this ruined for me. We’re going to celebrate at the convention together.” Matthew’s wife was later seen pacing the floor of the Tradia office, muttering to herself, “I always knew it would come to this.”
- Steve White of ITEX told me, in all seriousness, that a merger with Proctor and Gamble is in the works. Apparently P&G has been looking at the company for at least five years. The multi-billion dollar company plans to add ITEX to their hair care line, packaging it with products like Suave. When asked why, Steve responded, “Who doesn’t want a membership to a barter exchange when they buy new shampoo? I mean, five bucks should go farther than just one bottle of shampoo, you know?” ITEX franchisees will be sent care packages/baskets with a sample of P&G products in exchange for their franchises.
- The World Consortium of Barter convened last weekend in Dallas to discuss the possibility of a world-wide barter currency. According to the two exchange owners that showed up for the event, it was simple to create a communal currency. Both are affilated with doBarter.
- Barry and Catherine of Barter21 revealed to me recently that the only reason they have created their barter software is to have something to talk about on Facebook. “We had these really boring Facebook pages until we got involved in the barter industry. Now we have something to talk about. People are responding. The software followed naturally”, Catherine admitted.
- Neha Gupta, our regular contributor, admitted that she has never done a barter deal. In fact, she doesn’t know anything about the industry at all. “I get all of my ideas by reading BarterIndependent.com. I just go to the site, read his articles, and then change them around a little bit. I think bartering is kind of stupid. I mean, why wouldn’t you just charge people money?”
- BizX, one of the more interesting barter exchanges, has closed all of their social media accounts. Jason Richards, Marketing Director of BizX explained it this way: “No one watches YouTube any more. We kept making these videos and no one was looking at them. And our blog was a miserable failure. We used to Tweet, too, but I’ve never done anything as stupid as that in my life. Tweet? What kind of verb is that? Nubian?” Dozens of YouTube fans stormed the BizX office, demanding immediate posting of the next member testimonial video. Three people were hurt, mostly by the yelling, and just their feelings. No other casualties have been reported.
- Tyler Seamons, owner of BarterNewsWeekly.com, has been reported to be stalking the Hurricane, Utah office of BarterCard. Threatening letters, obnoxious voice mail, constant emailing, and a bag full of rubber bouncy balls have all aimed at Wayne, CEO of BarterCard. Apparently Tyler is still angry about a comment made on one of the early articles posted on the BNW website in which Wayne asserted the world-wide dominance of BarterCard AND forgot to use proper capitalization and punctuation. “I’ll get the b@#$%^&! No one comments on my site in lazy English!”
Hopefully you recognize that none of the above mentioned “news” is real, and that it is written for the fun of satire and not meant as anything personal or libelous or anything else that could get me sued. I’m speaking to you Matthew. Yes, you, in Oregon. To everyone that I pick on here, I hope it made you laugh. Happy April Fool’s Day.
