AOL buys Huff Post. Your take?

[trof]

I think not good.
:shrug:

[blm]

1. Think back: Why did AOL inflate its worth and takeover TimeWarner/CNN? How is it that when

AOL got caught they only ended up with a slap on the wrist from DoJ? Whose interests have been served since AOL took over CNN?

[karynnj]

27. excellent questions - and unfortunately we all know who they benefited

[hlthe2b]

2. Good for Arianna... but less clear for the rest of us.

$$ wins out once again.

[sasha031]

3. I think it will cause loss of Independence, allot more gossip less news

[tularetom]

4. I'm amazed that AOL has the funds to buy morning coffee for their staff

Who uses it anymore?

[underpants]

11. I said this today, "I didn't know AOL still existed"

[ShadowLiberal]

39. I said the same thing when I heard the news, "AOL is still around?"

I thought AOL folded a while ago, I mean you don't hear anything about them anymore for a reason.

[ixion]

5. Not good, but not surprising.

They had been going downhill for some time, IMO. Their purchase by Aol is the death knell.

[Generic Other]

6. AOL is way too conservative

All of their news stories attract idiotic responses, and their polls too. So how will they run a progressive site? Into the ground is my guess.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. I would not describe HuffPo progressive

Its at best a mix bag with tremendous variance in quality.

[Generic Other]

15. well wayyyyy left of AOL

so that does not bode well for them.

[LTR]

22. They don't care about ideology

To them, it's mostly about money.

HuffPo has a strong readerbase. They get more traffic than Drudge. Hell, they probably have more hits than any of AOL's sites. They knew what they were buying, and they're not gonna mess with it. Essentially, they wanted a site with drawing power.

[PhillySane]

23. She's a sellout.

In it for the cash. Prominently featured stories from now on will be = to The National Enquirer.

[LTR]

28. ...and you really can't rely on the comments section to determine their ideology

Witness the comments on Yahoo's news articles. They draw all the loonies!

All websites attract the low-hanging right-wing fruit to the comments section. And a bunch of assholes who don't have the balls to voice their hateful opinions to your face.

[Generic Other]

30. seems like DU is the only oasis in a desert of parched brain numbskulls

Nothing but crazy people seem to post on most of the comment sections of anything other than DU. Seldom a sane voice.

[LTR]

31. Beg to differ, though

I've seen a few crazies here.

Not of the wingnut variety, of course.

But on the rest of the web, wingnuts just like to whine a lot. They're a bunch of crybabies after all.

[customerserviceguy]

7. I never could stand her anyway

That Zsa Zsa Gabor accent drives me up the freaking wall every time I hear it. She also seems like the classic woman who used a man to get ahead, even willing to be a beard for a gay man who she was happy to help hide in the closet while he ran for higher office.

[JuniperLea]

8. No great loss...

HuffPo has been sucking hard for several years now. I have only read articles from there when linked here, and then I've taken them with a giant ol' cow lick sized chunk of salt!

[AsahinaKimi]

9. I guess we will have to see...

Just like MSNBC since Comcast took over. Rachael said "they" were not going anywhere. We shall see.

[wildbilln864]

12. never read it anyway!

unless someone here recommended something there. :shrug:

[Jackpine Radical]

13. The grip on the media (including the new media) tightens.

Too many independent voices will not be tolerated.

[greytdemocrat]

14. It's damn good!

For Arianna. 300 million baby. And she is still "running" the place. Wink,wink.

[rucky]

16. I'd rather have Arianna in charge of AOL content

then whoever's in charge of it now.

[Shagbark Hickory]

17. Bad. This was one site not owned by one of the 6 companies that control the media.

Not anymore.
And it will be pure cheese in no time.
Ao-hell can suck it.
315 million. wtf.

[Electric Monk]

18. She's laughing all the way to the bank, and lots of her staff got screwed.

She (imho) ought to cut them in for a %

[Shagbark Hickory]

19. Arianna is a sellout.

She sold out her viewers like she sold out her conservative pals back when she switch ideologies.

[hfojvt]

24. that about sums it up

but I would be surprised if Skinner, Elad and EarlG wouldn't sell out DU to Fox News for $300 million if they offered it and promised to let them keep running it. It would be crazy not to take $100 million (each).

At that point probably 80% of the registered users would jump ship and head off to DKos or some other site and Fox would find that all they had done was spend $300 million to close the site down.

The real question is, how do the registered users and other visitors feel about it?

Come to think of it, I registered at Huffpo once, but I never visit there and post, so that's kind of a moot point. I abandoned them long ago.

[LTR]

33. In this day and age...

...if some company offers you millions of dollars more for your site than it's likely worth, you're a fool if you don't take it! You can always start another one!

I'm thinking that the founders of MySpace were geniuses for selling out to News Corp. when they did. Now Rupert and the boys are left holding the bag for the passing fad they paid way too much for.

[Shagbark Hickory]

35. Of course they would. I don't fault A.H. for being a good businessperson.

I fault her for taking an independently owned company, started from scratch, with her name on it, and selling it to a company that is not exactly renowned for their intellectual stories. Of course, the site did have a lot of that popeater stuff in it but the bloggers were what maintained some degree of journalistic integrity.

I guess now it will be another place to read up on justin bieber.

[Canuckistanian]

20. Meh

Good for her. She's making some dough from the site she's worked to build for all these years.

At least it isn't some rabid RWer taking over.

[LTR]

21. Everything AOL touches turns to dirt

Witness Winamp and Netscape.

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WillyT]

26. It's A Brave New World...

:shrug:

[MilesColtrane]

29. Best case scenario: a lot of senior citizens begin to turn liberal

Likely scenario: HuffPo will continue its slide into mediocrity and eventually become another "fair and balanced" news source.

[Dappleganger]

32. Steve Martin's take...

(from his twitter feed)

"AOL bought the Huffington Post. To celebrate everybody gets a disk good for a free month of dial-up."

:rofl:

[burrowowl]

34. Not good at all

When I used AOL as a service provider (along time ago) they would give me static when I would try to access commomdreams.org

[Brilliantrocket]

36. Oh Lordy...

[cynatnite]

37. AOL still sucks. Huffpo does, too. Nothing's changed. n/t

[PBS Poll-435]

38. Piss buys Shit

Piss finally has thier day at the market.

[JNelson6563]

40. Disappointing, not at all surprising.

And I am getting many lolz out of it.

Julie

[LooseWilly]

41. It's simple "synergy," in my opinion.

You know... like the bad movie with Topher Grace.

AOL started up hyper-local news sites (www.patch.com). The logical extension of these sites is to then "leverage" this news which they pay free-lancers to write for them— by collecting it at a national source (like AP, but AOL).

For instance, when the PG&E pipe in San Bruno went "boom" patch.com had a story filed that same night (I was the writer's ride, and had I had press credentials to get past the police barricades I probably would've written the story myself).

Now, with Huffington Post, which has national brand name recognition, AOL has an outlet for any of the local stuff that might have a national audience... allowing them to make money twice off the couple of bucks they pay to the actual reporters.

It would be in AOL's best interest to not Murdock-ify the outlet for this double-dipping off their own news sources... but these corporate ass-hats have a way of shooting themselves in the foot in the name of message control.