AOL Buys The Huffington Post for $315M

AOL Buys The Huffington Post for $315M


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BY SAMANTHA MCCLENDON

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EXTRA EXTRA... read all about it!! AOL officially bought The Huffington Post for a whopping $315 million... 300 of those million will be paid in cold hard cash. MSNBC says AOL is struggling so... it's probably about time.

NICOLE LAPIN: "A big surprise though I will say. AOL has been on this shopping spree guys. I was reading a commentary this morning that called it the last scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid where AOL is trying to hang on surrounded by the Bolivian Army and has no choice but to make this move."

Tech Buzz Blog says the price tag alone is impressive -- calling it the biggest blog acquisition ever.

"This also makes AOL the biggest blog content producer today -- they now own Engadget, TechCrunch and HuffPo and many more — the big names in the blogosphere."

Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post co-founder -- told the Wall Street Journal, AOL shares her vision.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: "This is my last act. Well I've had many incarnations ever since Athens, Greece, England, here, books, television and this is the most exciting thing I've ever done."

AOL will make Huffington the editor in chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which means she'll control all of the editorial content for AOL. A writer for The Daily Beast says there is a difference between being the owner and being an employee.

"It's the difference between a mother and a babysitter. They both love their kid, but only one will race into a burning building to save it. Especially with a swollen bank account back home."

The Huffington Post gets 500 million views a month, and some say this is a great opportunity for AOL to use that viewership for advertising. One writer for Talk Left says this could be good business for AOL.

"I actually like the idea, but then, I'm one of the few people I know who still uses an AOL e-mail account. So aside from the merger reassuring me that AOL isn't going out of business anytime soon, what does it mean for the news, other than a behomoth conglomerate?"

That's exactly why a reporter for Bloomberg questions whether this is a smart move for AOL.

"We know that Huffington has some strong political views and is there a risk for AOL in putting someone in charge of editorial content with those views if traditionally they've had a non-partisan approach?"
"We will see."

This is AOL's biggest acquisition since it parted ways from Time Warner. So what do you think? Will the Huffington Post still keep its flavor? Or will the new ownership water it down?

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