AOL Acquires The Huffington Post for $315 Million

• Share This Post
• Pin It
• 2
• 1
• Sparkle (
  0
  )
   

According to TechCrunch, AOL announced this morning that it purchased The Huffington Post for $315 million dollars. But don't worry -- Arianna Huffington isn't going anywhere. This deal is partly about buying a ready-made brand, but also about acquiring the talent that makes Huffington Post one of the top-read sites on the Internet.

As Tim Armstrong states on TechCrunch (another AOL acquisition):

“Our only thing when we do acquisitions,” says Armstrong, “the price has to be fair, it has to fit the strategy, and the entreprenurs have to stay."

The Huffington Post has been pulling in "25 million unique monthly visitors," according to its press release. Up until this point, those numbers came from people buying into Arianna Huffington's vision. The question is, will she be able to deliver on a larger scale and keep all of those readers with AOL now behind her financially?

As the press release on The Huffington Post states,

As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post's co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

This acquisition is also part of AOL's overall vision, seen with recent sites such as the hyperlocal Patch. According to PC Magazine:

"Our goals for 2011 included a massive expansion at the local level, launching on the global scene, starting with Brazil, and doing a lot more on the woman's space," she [Huffington] said. AOL will help accomplish that, particularly its localized Patch brand, which Huffington said will boost coverage during the 2012 elections.

Twitter lit up with the news: