“The Huffington Post has already been growing at a prodigious rate. But my New Year’s
resolution for 2011 was to take HuffPost to the next level — not just incrementally,
but exponentially,” Arianna Huffington wrote of the deal.
Online company AOL Inc. is buying online news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news.
The deal announced early Monday puts a high-profile exclamation point on a series of acquisitions and strategic moves engineered by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in an effort to reshape a struggling Internet icon. AOL was once the king of dial-up online access known for its ubiquitous CD-ROMs and “You’ve got mail” greeting in its inboxes.
Perhaps just as important as picking up a news site that ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news destinations, AOL will be adding Huffington Post co-founder and media star Arianna Huffington to its management team as part of the deal…
After the acquisition closes later this year, Huffington will be put in charge of AOL’s growing array of content, which includes popular technology sites Endgadget and TechCrunch, local news sites Patch.com and online mapping service Mapquest.
The price that AOL is paying is “really just the hiring fee to get Arianna,” said technology analyst Rob Enderle. “This is one of those out-of-left-field moves that actually makes a lot of sense. This could put AOL back on the map.”
