Community Corner

AOL Acquires The Huffington Post

If you missed it, Patch's parent company, AOL has acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million.

On Super Bowl Sunday, AOL, the owner of Patch, announced the acquisition of The Huffington Post. Here's what AOL CEO Tim Armstrong had to say about the $315 million deal:

"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.  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.

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader—one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information.  Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience.  By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable – social, local, video, mobile and tablet. 

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In the local area, 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 just a few points around what this deal brings to market: 

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  • Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117 million unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and about 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).
  • Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.
  • 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.

In the meantime, Gig Harbor Patch will continue serving the community daily with breaking news, events and inspiring stories around town.


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