Comedian and late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien announced today, April 1, 2012, that he has purchased the tech news site Mashable for a whopping 3,500 Smackeroos and has ousted its CEO and founder Pete Cashmore.

O’Brien announced the news through a video on Mashable’s YouTube video page; you can watch that video here in full below.

Of his reasoning behind wanting to take over Mashable, O’Brien said the following:

This week, on Episode 226 of The Drill Down podcast, Devindra, Dwayne, and Andy talk about a controversial new lawsuit that pits Yahoo! against Facebook and a new suggested code for sharing content on the Internet.

But first, the headlines…iPad preorders are through the roof, Instagram teases an Android app, Gowalla shuts down, Microsoft tests a super-fast touchscreen, former Facebook director becomes Reddit CEO, CNN to purchase Mashable, Twitter buys Posterous, and the Encyclopedia Britannica stops publishing.