AOL Acquires Huffington Post

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Tim Armstrong's written announcement of the acquisition:

AOL has agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most influential and fastest growing properties on the Internet.

AOL believes 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 her 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. 

 The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women's content.  In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences.

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.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone.  Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people -- the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information.  Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space.

This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more.  This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post.  Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market:

 ·      Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM 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% last year – that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% - and 15x 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.

 ·      Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers. 

 In the local area, the combination of the twocompanies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale.  This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way.

 If you would like to read AOL's official news release, it is here:  http://corp.aol.com/2011/02/07/aol-agrees-to-acquire-the-huffington-post/