I decided to make one last sweep of my favorite sites before bed and was shocked by the headline on Huffington Post. They have been acquired by AOL! The deal apparently was literally signed at tonight's Super Bowl. Crazy, right?
h/t to neroden for this link:
AOL, Inc. (AOL: News ) Monday said that it agreed to acquire privately-owned, The Huffington Post for $315 million, about $300 million of which will be paid in cash funded from cash on hand. The transaction is expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter 2011.
According to Arianaa Huffington, all of AOL's content is to be rolled up under Huffington Post Media Group with Arianna as its president and editor-in-chief.
I'm not really sure what to make of this right now. I look forward to reading opinions in the comments below. One thing I thought was interesting was Arianna's comment about leveraging Patch.com's network of citizen-journalists.
AOL's Patch.com covers 800 towns across America, providing an incredible infrastructure for citizen journalism in time for the 2012 election, and a focus on community and local solutions that have been an integral part of HuffPost's DNA.
Patch tried to recruit me not too long ago but I didn't think they had enough going for them, even with AOL's name recognition and financial resources. It will be interesting to see if Huffington can turn the network into something meaningful. I've never thought of AOL leaning politically one way or the other. It will also be very interesting to see how associating themselves with a well-known liberal will impact their overall brand scores.
What do you think?