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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
AOL to Acquire Huffington Post for $315 MillionMonday, February 7, 2011 Arianna Huffington will be the new chief of content at AOL as part of a deal in which AOL acquires her Huffington Post for $315 million. The combined news and information divisions of AOL and HuffPo will reach 117 million uniques in the U.S. and 270 million worldwide, the companies claim. Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the five-year-old namesake site, will become AOL’s president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will now embrace all of AOL’s content brands. This will put her in charge of entities such as Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch and StyleList. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong called this the beginning of a “next-generation media company.” Huffington called it “truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us.” At first glance, the deal gives both parties some important assets. AOL has struggled with content strategies over the past several years. It has acquired blogs and launched a hyper-local project (Patch), but the company has failed to attract the advertising needed for growth. HuffPo may give the aging portal a better foothold in the more recent currents of Web news use. Huffington Post is one of the great success stories of the post-bubble Web. Founded in 2005, the site started more as a celebrity blog that evolved into one of the leading news destinations and most influential online sources of commentary in national politics. HuffPo gets from AOL a highly evolved technology platform as well as access to an in-house ad network and sales staff. The $315 million deal will be paid mainly with AOL’s cash on hand and should close at the end of the first quarter or early second quarter of 2011. All Things D columnist Kara Swisher interviewed Armstrong and Huffington in Dallas at the Super Bowl, where the two announced the deal. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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