Business & Tech

AOL Acquires Huffington Post

The owners of one of the Internet's most popular blogs recognized the power and potential of AOL sites, particularly Patch.

If you haven't heard, AOL, the parent company of Patch, has acquired the uber-popular blog, The Huffington Post.

AOL's CEO, Tim Armstrong, sent an e-mail to us employees Sunday describing why the $315 million deal, as reported by The New York Times, is pretty exciting.

"Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet," he wrote. " We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world—The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet."

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"In the local area," he added, "the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform.  This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way."

Here are some numbers that put the deal into perspective:

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·      Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117 million unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and 270 million monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

·      The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet.  It grew 22 percent last year – that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18 percent - and 15 times as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

·      AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

So the question you're probably asking is, "What does this mean for University Place Patch?"

To tell you the truth, it's so early in the process that nobody is exactly sure what the impact will be. Word from up top, however, is a deal like this can only be a good thing for Patch

Content-wise, don't expect much to change.

Are we still going to bring you breaking and government news? We will still provide helpful content for parents, as well as information to help you plan your weekend? Will we still bring you events, announcements and some of the coolest photos from around town?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Nothing will change UP Patch's mission of giving visitors timely, useful and entertaining information. The editors of the 800 or so Patch sites across the country, myself included, are staying put. We still have big ambitions to bring more users to the site and make it one of the most popular in the South Sound.

So to journalism junkies like myself, the HuffPo deal is exciting news. It points to the fact that AOL, which has its share of critics, is on the right path of the online news journey.

But if something that happens in New York isn't all that exciting to someone who lives in University Place, that's OK. You want local, dare I write, hyper-local news, right?

Don't worry. We've got your back on that stuff too.


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