AOL To Buy Huffington Post

Hugh Pickens writes writes "The La Times reports that AOL has agreed to purchase the Huffington Post for $315 million. The purchase will increase AOL's news portfolio as it competes against Yahoo's growing online news publication profile and Google's news efforts, as well as traditional media companies online. The purchase has yet to acquire government approvals, but the boards of directors of each company and shareholders of the Huffington Post have approved the transaction."

Comments

AOL are still going?

[makomk]

AOL are not only still going, but actually buying up websites? Who'd have thought it. Wonder how long until they kill this one off.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Moryath]

I don't know. Huffington Post and DailyKos were the two big attempts of the left wing to create their own "viral" websites. The end result's been a lot of hate speech, a whole lot of banned commentariat, and very little if anything accomplished.

Huffington Post's biggest claim to fame in recent years has been as a haven for the anti-vaccination lunacy of retards like Jenny McCarthy, Dana Ullman, and followers of Andrew Wakefield.

Re:AOL are still going?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Until their base of "confused old people who pay $20 a month to hear 'You've Got Mail' whenever their bloated AOL client connects over the (cheaper, faster) DSL they are actually using..." dies off, AOL should be able to operate with a certain degree of freedom.

Longterm, their prospects are rather grim(which is presumably why they are buying up non-doomed properties while the cash holds out); but anybody who hasn't switched away from an AOL subscription by now(either to DSL for incrementally less money and more speed, cable/fiber for more money much more speed, or no-name dialup for the same product at 1/2 to 1/3 the price) is probably a till-death-do-us-part customer...

Re:AOL are still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder how long until they kill this one off.

Who would notice? Most all the front page stories are ads now. And AOL could hardly make the place look any uglier...

Re:AOL are still going?

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Perhaps it's time to get a smartphone? Tethering to your phone in 3G areas is at least 10 times faster than your dialup, too.

Re:AOL are still going?

[robthebloke]

They haven't managed to kill off Time Warner yet, and to be honest netscape had been killed off by microsoft long before AOL got involved. AOL seems to be little more than a hedge fund these days.....

Re:AOL are still going?

[Junta]

I think I see their plan..

They buy up *all* the websites, then take them off the 'web' and make them accessible only through their 'AOL keyword'.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

but that might cost MONEY! *gasp!*

Re:AOL are still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the 'cheap' part. Basic data plans start at $15 a month (capped at like 200mb), and tethering is an additional $20 on top of that usually.

Re:AOL are still going?

[commodore6502]

Well let's see - Dialup is $6.99 times 12 == ~$84.
Tethering is $35 (clear) times 12 plus tax == ~$450.

And for what purpose? Just to read email and facebook? I appreciate the suggestion but don't think it's worth paying almost 400 dollars more.

Re:AOL are still going?

[commodore6502]

>>>3G areas is at least 10 times faster than your dialup

I don't know how you figure. Dialup is 53k while 3G is 200k (or so I've heard). It's only four times difference. ----- Also my dialup squashes the images to almost no space, so it's actually faster (pages load as fast as my 1000k DSL).

Re:AOL are still going?

[psyopper]

Rooting your phone is free, as are several tethering apps in the Android market. If you are already paying for data on your phone, why not use it.

Re:AOL are still going?

[commodore6502]

There's a lot of hate directed at AOL, but people forget it was the first national service to provide a full graphics interface (rather than plain text) in the 1980s.

Whatever they are now, they used to be a great service (just like Mac used to be a great computer) (j/k). - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjgH27p-FAM

Re:AOL are still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw someone make a point about a news source you like?

Finding news that really does not have a 'spin' on it is hard. Fox is right up there with spin. However, you can not sit there with a straight face and say Huffington is any better. Fox is just more blatant about it. It is the subtle ones you need to watch out for. They do that by fact stacking and putting opinions after the facts or running them together. Another way is to put the facts that make something look bad at the top of an article and the ones that they dont like so much near the end (as many people only read the first few paragraphs and they know it).

People say 'reality has a liberal bias'. What big pile of steaming ... (see how I put an opinion in the middle here) The stories will have whatever spin the editor of the story puts on it even if they do not realize they are doing it. 'Blogs' are even worse as they are usually by people who are interested in the story. So they put their own take on it.

What it comes down to it though, is facts based news does not sell as well. As it is rather dull and boring. "If it bleeds it leads".

People also like paying for self affirmation. "see I was right and those xyzs were total loon jobs". So while you may not like Fox news there are many out there that like hearing that sort of news. Just as there are many out there who like watching CNN/MSNBC.

Filter out the opinions on stories (many many many have them). You will see much of the 'news' is just opinion fluffer. The op'ed pieces are easy to filter. It is the ones where they bury it in the story... Do not let others tell you what your opinion is. Make up your own mind with the thing holding your ears apart. That is why I do not watch the newsertainment stations.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Moryath]

Did I say they were any better? No.

Slanted news is slanted news. Makes no difference whether it's Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Huffington Post, Drudge, DailyKos, or even the freak-of-the-week-show from over at Little Green Fucktards.

Re:AOL are still going?

[commodore6502]

>>>If you are already paying for data on your phone

Nice idea, but I don't pay anything for my cellphone ($0.00 per month + per-call billing). So yes I would have to pay an extra several hundred extra, if I switched my travel laptop over from dialup to cellular internet.

Re:AOL are still going?

[0123456]

Well thank god we have the bastions of intelligence and civility over at Fox News, Free Republic and Conservapedia to help usher in a new dawn of meaningful political discourse, right?

There's no such thing as 'meaningful political discourse', politics in its entirety is just apes throwing turds at each other.

The difference is that you won't see those sites being sold to AOL any time soon. The left just can't build a viable online community because they're always fighting over who gets to be Supreme Leader of the Glorious People's Website.

Re:AOL are still going?

[sortius_nod]

Agreed, blatant spin is easier to deal with, bullshit filter gets triggered early. News sources that pretend to be "fair and balanced" (to steal the Fox line) but are really spun to buggery are the hard ones to deal with. I prefer to get my news from multiple sources and make up my own mind.

Being spoon fed any news is a bad thing.

Re:AOL are still going?

[tnk1]

Of course, Time Warner spun off AOL last year, so they won't be killing Time Warner at all.

As for the rest of it, AOL actually made a (small) profit last year, unlike pretty much every year since 2005 or before.

AOL still makes money off of Granny, but that's no longer their business model. They're a content and advertising company now, and one of the biggest, if not THE biggest internet advertising business around courtesy of advertising.com.

Having said that, the CEO has mentioned in the past that, unlike the previous execs, he recognized that AOL still made some good money off of its shrinking subscriber base and that perhaps the company should not just ignore that part of the business any more.

Its an open question as to whether AOL will kill the Huffington Post, since there is no doubt it has killed other sites. Still, their record is better than Yahoo's Touch of Death(tm) to just about every interesting technology that it has bought as well. And unlike that abortion known as Bebo, the HPost is actually a purchase in line with AOL's current direction as a content provider and ad hub. The price still seems a little on the silly side, but not as batshit insane as the 800 million for Bebo.

Only time will tell, I suppose.

Re:AOL are still going?

[ISoldat53]

The people who use AOL are not the people who read Huffington Post. I don't see how this deal makes a lot of sense.

Re:AOL are still going?

[DrXym]

Huffington Post's biggest claim to fame in recent years has been as a haven for the anti-vaccination lunacy of retards like Jenny McCarthy, Dana Ullman, and followers of Andrew Wakefield.

The HP might be fine for political commentary but it is a haven for quacks, woos and snakeoil salesmen peddling all kinds of pseudo scientific new age nonsense. It is as anti-science and anti-reality. Not surprisingly many liberals, especially scientists and academics are as ashamed by what the HP promotes as conservatives are of creationist drool that infects their blogs.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Remus Shepherd]

I don't know. Huffington Post and DailyKos were the two big attempts of the left wing to create their own "viral" websites. The end result's been a lot of hate speech, a whole lot of banned commentariat, and very little if anything accomplished.

I'd say that turning a $1 million investment into a $315 million buyout is one hell of an accomplishment.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Dishevel]

Yawn.....go back to Fox News where you belong....

Yeah! Everyone knows there is only bias on one side.
The side you do not like.

Re:AOL are still going?

[DrXym]

I think AOL knows the writing is on the wall for their service. It costs a lot of money to run and their user base is literally dying off. It must be an expensive pain in the ass to maintain that client, and run all those dialups and field support calls, and an infrastructure of mail servers, and put content into the thick client to justify its existence. At some point the user base will drop below a point that it is economical to do and they'll kill the service in phases. I think AOL are smart to diversify. There is a lot of money to be made from selling advertising space in blogs and the like and they must be relatively cheap to buy and run compared to old media websites.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Compaqt]

Just when you thought Huff Post couldn't get any worse.

What's funny is that AOLnews actually looks like a professional news site, like Politics Daily. Huffington Post looks like a carnival side show.

Re:AOL are still going?

[jeff4747]

Yes, a $1M investment leading to a $315M buy-out clearly demonstrates how unsuccessful the left is. Let me know when Free Republic gets bought out.

Btw, "the left" doesn't care who is "Supreme Leader". We're just not into authority, as evidenced by the left's general dislike of Obama after the election.

Re:AOL are still going?

[StikyPad]

Me too!

Re:AOL are still going?

[CaptSlaq]

"The left" "not into authority". I have a new one for an icebreaker comedy routine.

Re:AOL are still going?

[gfreeman]

+1 Funny

Re:AOL are still going?

[gfreeman]

You've just answered your own (unasked) question. They're buying it BECAUSE it brings in eyeballs that they've not had before.

Re:AOL are still going?

[antdude]

They still have $$$?

Re:AOL are still going?

[swordgeek]

No.

AOL was *NEVER* a great service. When I had a 1200 baud modem, AOL was a joke. When I was first discovering usenet, AOL was unknown, but a few years later became a bad joke. (And arguably led to the eventual death of usenet.) When a tech preview of Mosaic rendered our Gopher site better than Gopher itself, AOL was a joke and a ghetto.

Re:AOL are still going?

[dougisfunny]

I think this is a confusion of KB vs Kb probably dialup is 56Kb and 3G 200KB.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

"AOL are not only still going, but actually buying up websites? "

You probably read some of them if you are a /. reader. AOL owns techcrunch and engadget.

Re:AOL are still going?

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Back when I had dial-up, I would normally get ~6KB/s. My current Verizon 3G service usually gets ~70KB/s.

YMMV

Re:AOL are still going?

[jc42]

Finding news that really does not have a 'spin' on it is hard. Fox is right up there with spin. However, you can not sit there with a straight face and say Huffington is any better. Fox is just more blatant about it. ...

This is nothing new. Throughout history, the news "industry" has been run by people with an interest in the news and a strong motive to persuade their readers rather than informing them. Any well-informed person has always tried to hunt down different versions of news stories, with different biases. The pretense that the internet has introduced a new problem here is just that, a pretense. It's just more blatantly obvious, because it's so much easier now to find reports with different biases. It can still be hard, but not nearly as hard as it was in the past.

We do have one very useful example of a news source that works well as a tool to check out a story from sources with different biases: Google News. Right now, if you go to their Business page, it has the AOL/HuffPost story right at the top. And after the first few links, it has a link with the text "all 1,614 news articles >>". This is their list of all known reports of the topic, ordered by google's "secret" ranking algorithm (which for news mostly means by time stamp ;-).

Complaining about the biases of news sources goes back as far as we have records of news sources. We haven't ever found a way to produce "unbiased" reporting, and we never will. The best we can do is make all the biases visible, which includes making the source information available. We're not there yet. But so far, the internet has been turning into a better tool for the task than we've had in the past.

We just need to persuade people to stop bitching about biased news sources, and read some of the alternative news sources that have become so easily available.

(What other sites do people here know of that make it easy to find multiple versions of news stories with different biases?)

Re:AOL are still going?

[bonch]

You're getting modded down, obviously by supporters of those sites. However, it's true--DailyKos was infamous for its "screw them" post regarding dead soldiers in Iraq, and since the campaign consultant scandal, Kos posts so little that the site has become a place for user "diaries." Basically, it's just user-submitted articles now that only serve to pat liberals on the back for being liberals.

Huffington Post was Ariana Huffington's attempt to create a left-wing version of the Drudge Report, right down to the name. It seems like it's just a bunch of celebrity news and pseudo-science. I've never understood why it was ever taken seriously by anyone.

Right-wingers have their kooky sites too, but then they have some mature, balanced ones like PowerLine. They get their message out, but they're not crazy or hateful about it. I can't speak to what is considered a mature, balanced left-wing site, but I'm sure one is out there. The problem is that liberalism tends to be so fueled by emotion that it drives centrists away, and if a moderate liberal expresses any hint of contradiction with the party line, they get attacked by other liberals.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Raenex]

However, you can not sit there with a straight face and say Huffington is any better. Fox is just more blatant about it. It is the subtle ones you need to watch out for.

Huffington Post subtle? Good one.

Anybody who takes the Huffington Post as a serious news organization has got to be waist-deep in liberal bullshit. It's nothing but a mouthpiece for liberal bloggers and peddlers.

Re:AOL are still going?

[bonch]

Yeah, and I'm sure it will have a long and successful future at a hip place like AOL. Or is it aol? Aol?

Re:AOL are still going?

[clarkkent09]

It makes a lot of sense. They already have old idiots, now they have young idiots. Advertiser's dream audience.

Re:AOL are still going?

[jc42]

Everyone knows there is only bias on one side. The side you do not like.

This is why, in the sciences, there is such a strong emphasis on not accepting results (especially unusual results) until they have been replicated by different observers (with different funding .-). It's well understood that discovering your own biases and blind spots can be extremely difficult, so researchers expect that their discoveries will be double- and triple-checked by others with different biases and blind spots.

The publishing industry has a different sort of example: It's well understood that hardly anyone can "edit" their own work. Simple typos can be very difficult to spot, when you "know" what you wrote. So you hand your text over to someone else to check. Especially difficult to recognize can be text that's ambiguous and has a reading that's radically different than what you were thinking. Spotting such things really takes someone else with a different mind.

At the silliest level, this mental problem leads to the game of finding headlines that have mutliple readings. One of my favorites was from the early 1990s, when the US first got involved in the Iraq war, and one newspaper had a headline that read "American Ships Head to Gulf". There are long lists of such things on a number of web sites. A few were probably intentional, but most examples like this illustrate the difficulty of seeing what you wrote might say to someone with a slightly different mindset. (That sentence is rather complex, and probably has a different reading than I intended, but I can't see it. ;-)

In any case, the need of multiple viewpoints with different attitudes and biases is an old, well-recognized problem. And it's even good for a bit of humor at times.

Re:AOL are still going?

[commodore6502]

>>>56Kb and 3G 200KB.

3G is nowhere near 200 kilobytes/second (approximately 2 Megabit/s). Clear Internet advertises their 3G at just 250 kbit/s.

Re:AOL are still going?

[commodore6502]

>>>When I had a 1200 baud modem, AOL was a joke.

Well - you're wrong. When I and most other people were using 300, 1200, or 2400 baud modems (i.e. the 1980s), the AOL company was the only service sending Full graphics to a national audience. Stuff like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Caribe
http://dsgames.net/qlink/caribe/images/cc-bbs.jpg
http://www.dsgames.net/qlink/habitat/images/habitat-popustop166.jpg
This was basically the precursor to Nintendo "Mii" and other icon-based worlds.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Moryath]

Both sides have their kooky and their mature sites.

I had almost listed Little Green Footballs as yet another site that operates more on cult of personality (which is ironic given that Mad King Charles has all the personal magnetism of day-old jello left in the trash), and a perfect example of how such cultishness is not unique to one side of the aisle or the other, as evidenced by the way he went from the right-wing deep end to the left-wing deep end in such a perfect performance of blackwhite (complete with unpersoning an amazing number of his former commentariat) that George Orwell himself could scarcely have written better.

As for "liberalism tends to be so fueled by emotion that it drives centrists away" - the right wing is much the same way. The lunatic fringe of the Pee Tardiers out there today are, let's face it, frightening in their behavior. What's going on in Texas with regard to education funding right now, to name just one example, is downright criminal - but to the Pee Tardier mindset, "OMG public education is left wing indoctrination against god they wanna teach evolution insteada tha bible kill it kill it break out the torches and pitchforks."

It's sad but true. Good luck finding the sensible, sane middle these days; between the media outlets and the politicians, the centrists have been told by both sides that we aren't "fundamentalist" enough for either side and we should just stay home or let both sides call us traitors.

Re:AOL are still going?

[rednip]

Any well-informed person has always tried to hunt down different versions of news stories, with different biases.
[citation needed]

People tend to say that but all of the people I know who might claim to be 'well informed' are really seem to live in a echo chamber. The yellow journalism of years past have morphed past the control of media moguls and now constitute something different. So much of the media is built upon FUD that it's hard to escape it, no matter where you look for news.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Mansing]

Site Information for huffingtonpost.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 128 Traffic Rank in US: 31
Sites Linking In: 40,775

Site Information for dailykos.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 3,775 Traffic Rank in US: 860
Sites Linking In: 10,523

Site Information for drudgereport.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 430 Traffic Rank in US: 85
Sites Linking In: 6,977

Re:AOL are still going?

[rednip]

They had something like 35 million in VC funding.

Re:AOL are still going?

[im_thatoneguy]

Tough to attack them for socialism now too!

That's one of the greatest capitalist achievements of the last half decade!

Re:AOL are still going?

[XxtraLarGe]

Both sides have their kooky and their mature sites.

As for "liberalism tends to be so fueled by emotion that it drives centrists away" - the right wing is much the same way. The lunatic fringe of the Pee Tardiers

I'd be interested in hearing your definition of mature...

Re:AOL are still going?

[Falconhell]

You realise by world standards none of these sites are actually left wing dont you?

JUst right and far right wing. Americans view of social justice would be laughable if not for its tragic results.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Commodore computer was an amazing computer back in the day... arguably one of the best. Why, a company with a product that amazing should end up being one of the most influential, successful, richest companies on earth.

But times change.

Re:AOL are still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely correct on Huffington Post, but it's rare for conservatives to be ashamed of creationism. Just look at most GOP state platforms: they proudly endorse creationism along with global warming denialists and birthers

Re:AOL are still going?

[drsquare]

Especially as theye convinced their workers to give their labour for free.

Re:AOL are still going?

[badkarmadayaccount]

I'm just waiting until Yahoo! buys them, and then get bought by HP.

Re:Wow, who cares?

[Chrisq]

Go die in a fire already. AOL? Huffington Post? Can you get more irrelevant than this?

Well your comment makes a good attempt at it.

If they waited another year

[Chrisq]

If they waited another year it would have been Huffington Post buying AOL.

Re:If they waited another year

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

AOL learned their lesson very well; back with Time Warner: Buy now, while they still think you are worth something...

Re:If they waited another year

[NevarMore]

If they waited another year it would have been Huffington Post buying AOL.

Even HuffPo isn't that dumb.

Re:If they waited another year

[Facegarden]

If they waited another year it would have been Huffington Post buying AOL.

Actually that's what I first thought it was when I very tiredly saw the headlines this morning.

Color me surprised

[alvinrod]

I'm surprised that anyone would think the Huffington Post was worth $315 million. I'm even more surprised AOL still has that kind of money.

/rimshot

Re:Color me surprised

[Xacid]

That was actually my first though.

An article I read mentions that this wasn't so much buying the site as it was buying Huffington herself as a way to perhaps revive AOL's dying economy.

My personal take: AOL doesn't stand a chance with the AOL name. That branding is tainted. Reinvent yourselves, guys.

Re:Color me surprised

[Sockatume]

It only recently turned a profit, IIRC. I'm not sure how you can value a project that only recently got into the black, at $315m. Maybe it's the HuffPo's advertising gross, although if it was that high I would've expected it to go into profit long ago. Maybe it's their anticipated ad gross based on projections into the near future. Maybe the intangable value of a zeitgeisty outlet is factored in somewhere.

Re:Color me surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL has the stink of death on it. I'm surprised HuffPo's board approved this. On the other hand, I won't be sad to see HuffPo's editorializing masquerading as journalism die.

Re:Color me surprised

[NoSig]

Knowing what I now know, I'd buy Google stock well before they got into the black.

Re:Color me surprised

[pablodiazgutierrez]

I'm so confused by AOL. They have ads all over Silicon Valley asking you to go work for them "before your boss does", but I have no idea what they're selling or working on. And why would anyone with a hint of critical thinking would want to work for them?

Re:Color me surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out the people "smart enough" to still have AOL are the same people that read HuffPo.

Re:Color me surprised

[Ken V.B. Liar]

I think its interesting that all of AOL's sites, TechCrunch, EndGadget, etc are being included in a new "The Huffington Post Media Group" division of AOL. It certainly makes it a lot easier to spin them off into a separate company.

Re:Color me surprised

[bkk_diesel]

That's only about five times revenue, which isn't an absurd price to pay.

Will the "unpaid contributors" stick with it?

[Chrisq]

Correct me if I am wrong but on the news this morning they said that most of the content of the Huffington Post came from unpaid bloggers, usually with a liberal outlook. It seems to me that they might not be as happy working for nothing for AOL as they were with an independent outlet. What are the chances that a good number of them will move elsewhere?

Re:Will the "unpaid contributors" stick with it?

[Compaqt]

1. Works for Slashdot. Basically it depends on whether people feel the site is a community as well as a business.

2. For people who have something to say, and want to say it to a lot of people (millions), free is a good price. Yeah, you're not getting paid, but you're not paying anything either.

Re:Will the "unpaid contributors" stick with it?

[mkw87]

1. Start Website
2. Gain followers.
3. Sell website for obscene money.
4. Profit.
5. Rinse, repeat.
6. ?

Re:Will the "unpaid contributors" stick with it?

[kickassweb]

Funny, I just got an email today from HuffPo "Eyes and Ears" to attend a meetup and do some citizen journalism. My first thought was "Why would I wanna do that for aoHell??"

Re:Will the "unpaid contributors" stick with it?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Party like it's '95 guys!

AO Who?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Or were they the ones whose users always posted responses to porn trolls on Usenet groups in the early 90's, "Add me to the list!" . . . "Me, too!"

Online media aggregation

[ronocdh]

It used to be that people heralded the internet as a death knell to the media conglomerates like ClearChannel and News Corps. Now we're seeing just how simple it is for even a dying internet presence to gobble up prominent venues for discussion, whether of technology (Engadget, TechCrunch) or politics (HuffPo). There's no reason to break out the tin foil hat just yet, but it's surprising how a left-leaning blog such as Huffington Post is not immune to a major league buyout. I'm sure many fans of the blog will defend this acquisition as a huge increase in journalistic capability, and claim that the authors will remain as interested in maintaining an independent politic voice, but only time will tell.

Re:Online media aggregation

[jollyreaper]

It used to be that people heralded the internet as a death knell to the media conglomerates like ClearChannel and News Corps. Now we're seeing just how simple it is for even a dying internet presence to gobble up prominent venues for discussion, whether of technology (Engadget, TechCrunch) or politics (HuffPo). There's no reason to break out the tin foil hat just yet, but it's surprising how a left-leaning blog such as Huffington Post is not immune to a major league buyout. I'm sure many fans of the blog will defend this acquisition as a huge increase in journalistic capability, and claim that the authors will remain as interested in maintaining an independent politic voice, but only time will tell.

The thing is, people are mobile on the web. Network execs hated the invention of the remote control because they counted on people being too lazy to get up off the couch and change the channel. The last thing they wanted was the ability for people to change channels as quickly as the impulse hit them.

And as far as the web goes, the content producers are just as mobile. If the Huff name dies, everyone can make the jump to a new site, easy-peasy.

As for her selling the site, I suppose there's absolutely nothing illegal about it though it does seem to go against the basic assumptions someone would make about why she put it together in the first place. The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind. But if none of that was spelled out in a charter and bylaws then there's nothing illegal about it even if it is terribly disappointing. Might be an impetus to put together something with those expressed interests instead.

The thing that surprises me is AOL of all companies. I thought they were in their death throes.

Re:Online media aggregation

[bjourne]

You don't need a tinfoil hat. Pure old greed will do just fine. Sad really because Huffington Post was one of the few worthwhile who reported real news instead of Brittney Spears gossip.

Re:Online media aggregation

[jollyreaper]

this is italicized

this is blockquote

plain test

Ok, looks like Italics don't work anymore but blockquote does. Once again slashcode amazes me. Didn't meant to steal the comment I was quoting above, tried putting it in italics.

Re:Online media aggregation

[nschubach]

For italics, you have to use <em>

Re:Online media aggregation

[Inda]

It looks italicized on this PC.

IE7 on XP.

Re:Online media aggregation

[Megane]

Or you could use the <quote> tag, which is what you get when you hit the Quote Parent button. It also doesn't show in a collapsed message. (Why they never did that to blockquote too, I don't know.)

As for italics, they do show in preview (and the tags even show up when I hit the Quote Parent button!), which makes this even more of a WTF.

Re:Online media aggregation

[dachshund]

As for her selling the site, I suppose there's absolutely nothing illegal about it though it does seem to go against the basic assumptions someone would make about why she put it together in the first place. The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind.

I don't know that HuffPo ever promised its readers or contributors that it was going to be, say, the Wikimedia foundation. Is that something you heard?

If there's a counterargument to what you say, it's that there's a dearth of well-funded, corporate backed left wing media (as compared to the political right). Rectifying this imbalance is one of the biggest tasks that facing the left. To whatever extent the HuffPo sale does this, it's a very good thing for the left.

If contributors don't like it, they'll probably go elsewhere or start their own blogs.

Re:Online media aggregation

[jeff4747]

I suppose there's absolutely nothing illegal about it though it does seem to go against the basic assumptions someone would make about why she put it together in the first place. The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind.

Yeah, but the the anti-vaxx, alt-med and new-agey crap spewed all over the site, and there really wasn't much of a reason to keep it "pure" anymore. So take the money and run.

Re:Online media aggregation

[fermion]

The internet has certainly disrupted many media models and the purchase of virtual online assets by less virtual companies is part of this. Newscorp is putting huge investment into an iPad app because the other physical assets are going to performing less well over time. The Fox news channel will lose viewers quickly as the death camps kill the old people that make up most of it viewers. The purchase of the WSJ was only a stopgap as the journalism has been declining for years and now it is mostly just dress up. Eventually the Simpsons is going to end. People are going to move to internet delivery of content, and when that happens the biggest moneymaker for NewsCorp is going away.

What is fascinating about AOL is that they use their assets to reshape the company rather than buying toys. AOL wants to increase the amount of original content and decrease the cost per item. HuffPo allows it to do exactly this. It also establishes AOL as a particular perspective on news that is different from the other major players. It is not going to be more of the same. Many companies are not so clever.

But such purchases are hard to be classified as aggregation. The barriers of entry are low so it is easy for the unpaid bloggers to move to another site. There are a few that could explode if there is mass exodus from the HuffPo.

Re:Online media aggregation

[Raenex]

As for her selling the site, I suppose there's absolutely nothing illegal about it though it does seem to go against the basic assumptions someone would make about why she put it together in the first place. The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind.

People are so naive. The first basic assumption anybody should make is that people are in it for the money unless presented with strong evidence to the contrary. I'm sure it wasn't even declared as a non-profit.

Re:Online media aggregation

[halcyon1234]

They broke the <i> tag.

user style fix:

i
{
font-style: italic !important;
}

Re:Online media aggregation

[Anonymous Coward]

As a liberal and a consumer of the site early on, I can say that the site has disappointed in a big way, any notion that it was there to boost liberal or progressive ideas. More oftten than not, liberal ideals were met with disdain and derision by an obviously conservative crowd; and recently, the emphasis has shifted toward tabloid fodder, such as Charlie Sheen's rehab and Lindsay Lohan's latest sexual fiasco.

I won't shed a tear to see it go.

Re:Online media aggregation

[Anonymous Coward]

<i> used to work and even now, if you look at the "Allowed HTML" listed under the comment text entry box, you will see:

<b> <i> <p> etc. etc.

This is a bug, it is new, and Slashdot needs to fix it. And shame on the Slashcode developers for shipping with such an obvious bug. And shame on them again for not having it fixed yet.

I didn't even report it because I thought it was so obvious and annoying that they would have it fixed in a day or two. I should have known, I guess.

When <i> worked, I used it for movie titles and book titles; I used <em> for actual emphasis (e.g. this bug is really annoying). Now I just use <em> for anything that should look italic. Lame.

Re:Online media aggregation

[jkauzlar]

The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind.

I heard it recently and I had to look it up just now: She was actually a republican in the 80's and 90's. Not only that, but she wrote a handful of articles for the National Review and was married to a republican congressman. I personally have no doubts that since that time she's come to sincerely hold many of the same views as HuffPo (conservatives who get smarter with time reach a point when they realize they're plain wrong), but I think her will to be successful/rich is and always has been stronger than her ties to any one ideology. HuffPo's format is a strong testament to that: celebrity drivel mixed with superficial politics (I'm a proud liberal, but much of their politics coverage is just flame-baiting with the right). Their popularity, however, enables a lot of very intelligent and worthy opinion journalists or analysts to find a platform, so it does and always will have some value as long as these opinions don't get suppressed by AOL.

It's called cashing out...

[slk]

For the Huffington Post, this was no doubt a ridiculously good offer. $300m cash for a web site, which has fairly good traffic but a limited amount of really unique content; they'd be idiots not to sell. The owners / investors make out very well, and future value becomes AOL's problem. Even (liberal, conservative) bloggers can do math well enough to know when it's time to sell out!

On the other hand, I'm surprised that the activist investors of the world haven't been trying to force AOL to turn this cash into dividends instead of bad web investments. I guess that would involve said activist investors seeing enough cash flow potential to actually buy AOL stock first.

who's taking over whom?

[tverbeek]

This reminds me of Disney's "take over" of Pixar, in which Pixar effectively took over Disney Animation.

Re:who's taking over whom?

[Attila Dimedici]

There is no reason to look outside of the history of AOL for something like that. When Time Warner split off AOL everybody talked about "Why did Time Warner buy AOL in the first place?" when in fact AOL had bought Time Warner and then kept Time Warner as the overall corporate name.

Re:who's taking over whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disney took over Pixar. Disney has its eggs in several other baskets besides animated feature films.

Re:who's taking over whom?

[ron_ivi]

Yet in the end, didn't Pixar's CEO became Disney's largest shareholder. Though I don't really think the whole thing was more of an executive-recruiting play, where the shareholders were trying to get someone competent on their board that they could trust.

Re:who's taking over whom?

[Sockatume]

I imagine that is why he wrote "Disney Animation" and not "Disney".

Re:who's taking over whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, everything I've read about it suggests that HuffPo will basically be running the show, and at least they've figured out a way to become profitable. Nature abhors a vacuum, and I can see an online left leaning network becoming something akin to Fox News (as a medium, not editorial style) as an outlet for reaching that type of voter/activist.

Unbelievable

[Azghoul]

Sure, the focus will be on AOL: Who? They have money? WTF?

But to me it's about two things:

1. Huffington Post was supposed to be some kind of independent voice. So much for that. Good job Arianna, sell your soul.

2. Really? We need f'ing government regulators to "approve" the sale? That's what our country has come to, huh?

Re:Unbelievable

[metrometro]

Ok, let me see if I've got this straight. You make two points: one to complain about corporate media consolidation, and the other to complain about the regulations that were once an effective barrier to media consolidation, before they were gutted by people who love them some corporate media.

Do YOU see any inconsistency there?

Re:Unbelievable

[footNipple]

Don't sweat it! AOL's news is comfortably left of center, so Huffpo won't be taking sides with the US, the west, Christianity or straight white males anytime soon.

Re:Unbelievable

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wouldn't sell your soul for $315000000, count yourself in the minority.

Well that's the end of that ---

[mwfolsom]

So long HuffPo it was good to know ya' -

Next up...

[morgauxo]

AOL buys SCO!

Re:Next up...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and based on AOL's latest research, SCO tries to claim a patent on landline connections to the internet and troll for cash. The rest of the world hurts itself laughing. Someone sends AOL a cell phone and a brochure for FIOS. Many AOL executives fire up WordPerfect and polish their résumés.

Huff OL

[Cartman's Mom]

The Huffington Post totally belongs on AOL. I believe it’s one of the few “commercially viable” new sites, but I think it’s pretty awful. Misleading teaser headlines, Hollywood gossip obsessed, thin on content. ”You’ve Got News”. Not.

Re:Huff OL

[solios]

This has been my experience with Huff - the last time I had the patience to wait for the front page to load, I was struck by the resemblance to USA Today. Just as tabloid, just as buzzword, just as bland - buckling under one of the most over-loaded information "designs" I've seen since the 90s.

That the site design seems contrived to make the "good stuff" hard to find., that the visual clutter is a significant majority of any loaded page, that you can get a "liberal opinion" elsewhere with a bit of effort and the celebrity drivel of your choice just by looking out the window... Huff's a perfect fit for AOL!

Re:Huff OL

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. The sad thing is that it wasn't always so. It actually used to be a fairly-well written, informative left-politics blog. But it has somehow morphed into the worst kind of National Enquirer-style tabloid trash.

A few months ago, they posted their first front page (it was the 5 year anniversary or something), and the difference was striking. It was all serious news. Now you have to wade through 10 articles of celebrity gossip, vaccine-autism idiocy, and self-indulgent guest-blogging to get to one article with any real meat to it.

Sounds like it will fit right in at AOL

Internet Bubble 2.0

[Konster]

Thus begins Internet Bubble 2.0

I mean, I read the news and thought they forgot to put a decimal point in front of the 3.

0.315 million.

Go go Huffington and all that, but damn, 315 million is a LOT of coin for a site like that.

Brutal

[GodricL]

I wonder how many people they'll have to layoff to counter the $315 million. Considering this article a few weeks ago. I can't help but think AOL's days are numbered. But then again we've been saying that for years now.

Re:Wow, who cares?

[commodore6502]

Noooo..... AOL die in a fire?
  - If AOL goes, so too does my cheap $7 dialup access which I use in hotels (and work to skirt around the filtering).

Fake ISP Buys Fake News Site

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail to see how this could register on anyone's care-o-meter, unless you wear a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows.

I thought AOL

[Stenchwarrior]

went out of business in '94...

Re:I thought AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, AOL lost their relevance when the floppy disc went obsolete. I never had any use for AOL CDs. Perhaps if they used CDRW discs they would still have been a successful business.

Re:I thought AOL

[Ant P.]

They did, but they repurposed their account cancellation call centre to handle the chapter 11 filing

Re:I thought AOL

[Facegarden]

went out of business in '94...

You know how when you pick a flower you've effectively killed it, but it still looks alive and continues to function for a while?

That's what happened to AOL in '94. Its time will come.
-Taylor

Huffy Past and A$$OnLine

[Anonymous Coward]

Great marriage. A good attempt at Huff to try to gain some legitimacy for themselves. Who uses AOL? Who reads Huff? And yet another Liberal pub has sold out. Not that I really care. We could do with less radical left and right 'news outlets'. The bloggers on Huff? They will probably fly elsewhere. To me the winner is the Huff.

Uh

[jav1231]

"The purchase will increase AOL's news portfolio"

The Huffington Post is news? I always thought of it as a mega-blog of commentary. Perhaps there belays a shift in our cultural thinking as traditional journalism dies and commentary from biases become the norm and thus the only thing we can call "news."

Re:Uh

[Sockatume]

Raw news is valueless today. There's little advantage to being the first to break it when the other outlets can be echoing your story in minutes. It's as fungible as water. Commentary is brandable, and unique, and protectable though. That's where the value is.

Re:Uh

[jav1231]

Commentary is also subjective, though. And can be fraught with mistakes or omissions purposefully to express a point of view. Then again, even pure journalism can't tell the whole story, only give different perspectives. In the end, I'd rather have several perspectives from say witnesses than commentary from an author if I want the news. That's not to say that I wouldn't find the commentary valuable but I would want the story first.

Re:Uh

[solios]

I hate to break it to you, but the shift towards "biased commentary" started with Walter Kronkite, if not earlier. Once the network execs figured out that viewers were trusting his face, voice, and delivery and were by and large fact-agnostic, that was basically the end of it.

Twenty to thirty years ago you could still get actual news out of the newspaper or television. These days you gotta dig long and hard, intentionally and carefully, for the few nuggets lost in the slurry of spin, opinion, and the almighty Sports & Entertainment.

Re:Uh

[LittleRedStar]

Twenty to thirty years ago you could still get actual news out of the newspaper or television. These days you gotta dig long and hard, intentionally and carefully, for the few nuggets lost in the slurry of spin, opinion, and the almighty Sports & Entertainment.

Not sure we've ever gotten actual news from the media outlets. By 'actual news' I am referring to the unbiased and accurate reporting of an event. There is and always will be a spin on the news. That can simply be not reporting all the details of an event, which leads to a reader's bias. It's interesting to read newspapers from decades, or even a century ago.

This isn't surprising...

[EmagGeek]

The Huffing-and-Puffington Post caters to lefties just like AOL. It seems like a match made in heaven.

Re:This isn't surprising...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought AOL mostly caters to old people who don't know that "the Internet" and "AOL" are different things.

You know, the kind of person who reads the Daily Mail.

You know, right-wingers.

Re:This isn't surprising...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obviously a lefty, so therefore by definition you don't think properly, and sure enough, you are wrong.

Re:This isn't surprising...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obviously a lefty, so therefore by definition you don't think properly, and sure enough, you are wrong.

Never mind the content on AOL. The service is used by a 50+ dial-up user, or a 50+ broadband user who still has AOL has his/her homepage for ease of email access. The users - not necessarily the content - leans right.

Want proof?

Look at the results of any AOL on-line political poll. They're way out of whack with the general public, and heavily conservative.

As we all know, on-line polls are self-selecting, and not useful as a gauge for the general public. But they do tell you something about the people who are vising the web-site, and voting.

On AOL, Obama has a much higher negative rating than he does at Gallup, Rasmussen, or any of the real pollsters; Palin has a much more positive rating on AOL than she does in 'real life.'

Is Huffpo dial-up only now???

[Trip6]

Man, that streaming Bill Mahar video will really suck...

why government approval

[Zebai]

I'm astonished that they are still pulling in enough money to buy anything. Also why does this need government approval at all they can't still be considered monopolistic or hold any important stake in our economy, defense, or anything else for that matter.

Best comment from the OP

[I8TheWorm]

JAKE 671 at 5:25 AM February 07, 2011

AOL absorbs AH, forming AHOL. PERFECT!

You're right

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the NYT:

Arianna Huffington will also "take control of all of AOL's editorial content."

How original

[Anonymous Coward]

So you support the anti-vaxxers, bev_tech_rob?

We can safely say that BEV_TECH_ROB is anti-vaccination?

Or was your tired old Fox news swipe just anti-thinking?

Any effect on Arrington's future?

[enilnomi]

From TFA: As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington will oversee a new group responsible for bringing together all editorial content from both companies including news, technology, music and local media websites.

Does this mean we can look forward to the editorial equivalent of a Celebrity Death Match between Ms. Huffington and Mike Arrington?

In other news

[Wireless Joe]

Daily Kos is in talks to be purchased by Adelphia, Crooks and Liars is being taken over by Net Zero, and TalkingPointsMemo will become a part of Earthlink.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

and Instapundit will be bought by Compuserve.

The bubble is back, baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can there be any doubt?

You buy something to control it.

[Marrow]

I cant help but think that this will mean an end to the independence of the HP editorial staff.
This sucks.

Re:You buy something to control it.

[ScentCone]

independence of the HP editorial staff

By which, of course, you mean the editorial staff's strong political leanings and the web site's lefty culture? If that actually becomes more balanced, people who go there for their news aggregation will just go somewhere else. This is just the web site's founder doing what she planned all along, and finally racking up a big chunk of cash after setting out bait for an audience that swears they hate it when anyone makes a big bunch of cash. The irony is pretty great, though.

"Rate this picture"

[rwade]

I've been reading HuffPo for a number of years and there is one thing that they do that is just so tacky, the "rate this picture."

There are always topics like "The 10 best cities to raise a kid" and then pictures of each city and then everyone votes on which picture is best. What is the point of that? About 50% of the time they'll put up a picture of a different city than that indicated.

Scale Huffington Post

[prone2tech]

Huffington Post, no doubt has fairly good traffic, however, lately as they've become more popular via links from Google News, the content on their site is almost inaccessible, or incredible slow (they appear to be using Microsoft technology to serve their content). If nothing else, perhaps AOL can help this site scale, or on the flip side, because of this merger, the Huffington Post won't need to scale.

Re:Scale Huffington Post

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I get a daily email news feed from Huff & Puff, but clicking on a link results in slow painful wait before any content appears on the screen (see what I mean here). The infusion of the AOL infrastructure resulting from this merger will probably improve their response time, but it will probably be at the expense of the content -- not that Huff & Puff was all that great to begin with.

Instant Message from Shivalolz

[tripleevenfall]

Now I r become death, the shatterer of websites

Nice

[argStyopa]

So Ariana Huffington collects $315 million for the website that agglomerates snippets dropped to her by leakers and other interested busybodies.

Really, it IS the 'end of days', isn't it?

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

wow $315 M! Not bad for a web site probably run from her laptop with content emailed in from her liberal buddies -- why didn't I think of that?

Re:Wow, who cares?

[TheABomb]

Actually, HuffPo is relevant, at least to a bunch of hipster douchebags who get all their news on their Mac via some Portland coffee shop's free wi-fi. You know, the kind who will absolutely stand behind a $1/3-billion display of capitalism if it's done by anybody else, right?

Track Record

[oDDmON oUT]

There's a reason one of the longest running USENET groups is alt.aol.sucks.

AOL allows it's userbase unfettered access USENET: Eternal September
AOL merges with Time/Warner: Why it failed
AOL billing practices: Just reverse the charges
AOL layoffs: Keep your bags packed

Good luck HuffPost...you may need it.

TechCrunch.com is now HuffingtonCrunch.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Following the announcement of AOL's acquisition of Huffington Post, effective today, TechCrunch.com will be renamed HuffingtonCrunch.com. Please update your bookmarks.

HuffPost is all about talkback

[Rob Y.]

One of the supposed big appeals of HuffPost is its talkback system, but I can't stand it. Slashdot's talkback system may be a huge resource hog, but it's the only one I've seen that can handle large threads in a way that's useful. If nothing else, Huff should emulate Slashdot's ability to take you back to your posting to see any responses. All HP has is the ability to page through hundreds of pages of stuff in an LIFO order, so you post just keeps getting buried deeper and deeper.

Re:HuffPost is all about talkback

[drsquare]

You should hope they copy the old slashdot system rather than the new one which doesn't actually work.

Hmm.... let's try another purchase

[artgeeq]

This made me wonder what the reaction would be if Microsoft bought Wired.com.

Who decides what news is?

[Loundry]

Not sure we've ever gotten actual news from the media outlets. By 'actual news' I am referring to the unbiased and accurate reporting of an event.

But who chooses which events will be reported? Events are happening all the time, all over the place. Remember that earthquake in Haiti? Things down there haven't gotten any better, but now no one cares nearly as much. Simply choosing what to report, and then doing it unbiased and accurately, is, in and of itself, biased. A reporter wants that people know some information. Wants for what? "Because it's newsworthy" assumes the point in dispute and is journo-bullshit.

The Age of Aquarius meets Eternal September

[frrrp]

The Age of Aquarius meets Eternal September - marriage made in heaven. Now I can hate 2 birds with one stone. HuffPo is home to the timeless Deepak Chopra quote - "No skeptic, to my knowledge, ever made a major scientific discovery or advanced the welfare of others."

Re:Wow, who cares?

[commodore6502]

Noooo..... AOL die in a fire?

If AOL goes, so too does my cheap $7 dialup access which I use in hotels (also work to skirt around the filtering).