Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2011, on the day the deal was announced; all figures and roles are as reported then. AOL, The Huffington Post and TechCrunch have all changed owners since.
AOL’s technology business has been struggling, so it has changed its investment strategy. AOL wants to be the world leader in news and information. It already surprised us when AOL bought the famous blog TechCrunch for $40 million. Some people were amazed. Well, the latest news is that AOL has bought Arianna Huffington’s blog, The Huffington Post, for the trifling sum of $315 million.
Arianna Huffington will become president of AOL and will run the editorial side in this new era of information. The blog had more than 200 million visits a month, and AOL now aims to multiply them and add them to its new network.
As a result of this purchase, the well-known blog TechCrunch will change its name to HuffingtonCrunch, and it is asking all its existing followers to update their bookmarks.
Blogs are still an emerging market, and the United States is obviously incredibly far ahead of us: in Spain you hear of blogs being bought for €3,000 or €4,500, but not much more, apart from the odd exception.
Featured image: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
