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AOL Buys Huffington Post

By Jeralyn

In the odd couplings department, AOL has just paid $315 million for The Huffington Post. It's more like a merger, and the whole shebang will be run by Arianna Huffington.

The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone.

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? [More...]

As far as news goes, there will be more of it. Arianna writes there are five things she wants to "double down" on:

...major expansion of local sections; the launch of international Huffington Post sections (beginning with HuffPost Brazil); more emphasis on the growing importance of service and giving back in our lives; much more original video; and additional sections that would fill in some of the gaps in what we are offering our readers, including cars, music, games, and underserved minority communities.

...By combining HuffPost with AOL's network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus, and international reach, we know we'll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform.

Huffington Post has been acquiring a lot of writers from publications like the NY Times and Newsweek, so this will be a strength to AOL's news content.

One thing that Huffpo and AOL see as a strength, because of its potential for ad dollars, that I think of as a negative from a reader's point of view is the effect on comments:

One of The Huffington Post’s strengths has been creating an online community of readers with tens of millions of people. Their ability to leave comments on Huffington Post news articles and blog posts and to share them on Twitter and Facebook has been a major reason the site attracts so many readers. It is routine for articles to draw thousands of comments each and be cross-linked across multiple social networks.

I don't see the value of commenting or getting into a discussion with such a large group of strangers. Maybe that's one of the few things that independent blogs can still do -- sustain a constant and familiar commenter base, where it's kind of like going to the neighborhood bar, as opposed to a football stadium.

On a related note, I think one reason people choose a particular blog to read and comment on is not because it is the first source of news on a particular story, but because it selectively chooses from among the many MSM versions, linking to the ones that are most informative or contain the most reliable details, and then offers either its own quick take or detailed analysis, in a way that stimulates thoughtful discussion. Who has time to sift through 400 comments?

So while I think the merger is good because it promises to offer fresh reporting as well as aggregation, on a lot of topics, in one place, I also thing there are downsides.

The one place I'm fearful they will muck it up is with the ads. Ad revenue seems to be a big reason AOL was willing to pay $300 plus million for HuffPo.

Ads on all MSM sites have become larger and more intrusive recently. No one wants to saarch for the "x" or "close" box on the ad to get to the article. Ads shouldn't cover content. They need to put the ads on the top, sides and bottom of the news, and leave the rest of the page alone.

But even that's not as bad as automatically playing video. As I've written before, that is the worst kind of intrusion and assault. I won't even click on an ABC news article because of it. Advertise if you must, but don't force us to watch commercials and video unless we click on the button to make it start playing.

In any event, I'm looking forward to the changes at AOL and HuffPo. Arianna is very savvy, she knows how to draw talent and she has her pulse on what news-hungry readers want to read. Whether that formula will work for the masses is another question, and we'll just have to wait and see.

Update: I usually access AOL through the mail page, but check out its home page. There are hardly any ads and they are unobtrusive. I hope it stays that way.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 07, 2011 (boomark / email).