The recent dramatic declines in users of some Facebook social-reading apps from newspapers like the Washington Post reinforces a lesson that media companies need to keep in mind at all times — namely, that Facebook is the information gatekeeper now, and you are just a provider. Read More »
Arianna Huffington says everything is fine at AOL and she doesn’t mind having her power reduced, but she also admits that private-equity firms have raised the idea of a spin-off of Huffington Post. Could this be the beginning of the end for the faded former portal? Read More »
Just over a year after AOL acquired the Huffington Post, much of the integration between the two is being unwound, and control over key elements of the business are reverting to founder Arianna Huffington. Should AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong be watching his back? Read More »
Open-web advocates may long for a revolt against walled gardens, but in the end the success of a social network is determined by the willingness of users to put up with its restrictions. For Facebook, that is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. Read More »
In addition to some eye-popping figures for page views and unique visitors, the latest Huffington Post statistics show that if there’s one thing the site knows how to do, it’s how to get reader engagement that other news sites and publishers can only dream of. Read More »
Can BuzzFeed turn itself from a silly meme-generator into a serious media outlet by hiring journalists like Politico writer Ben Smith? If the meteoric rise of the Huffington Post has shown us anything, it’s that new media entities can spring from the most unlikely of sources. Read More »
Brad Garlinghouse, President of the Applications and Commerce Group and head of AOL’s Silicon Valley operations is leaving the beleaguered online service, AOL according to multiple sources. Garlinghouse is well known in Silicon Valley as the author of the Yahoo Peanut Butter Manifesto. Read More »
AOL has said it remains committed to rolling out its Patch.com network of a thousand hyperlocal news outlets across the U.S., but reports about cost-cutting efforts raise the question of how long the troubled former web giant can maintain that commitment to its money-losing hyperlocal project. Read More »
The idea that AOL might want to merge with Yahoo — as a news report on Friday said it does — isn’t surprising, since the company has tried to arrange a similar deal at least twice. The only question is which metaphor for failure should apply. Read More »
Carol Bartz may be gone, but there’s another CEO who has also spent two years trying — and failing — to turn around a former web giant: namely, AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong. How much longer does he have before he gets the chop as well? Read More »
After releasing its earnings for the latest quarter, AOL’s stock fell by as much as 30 percent at one point on Tuesday. Why? Because while it showed some revenue growth, the company said the turnaround investors have been waiting for is still a long way off. Read More »
Everywhere around us we see evidence of chaos in the media industry. So what can be done about this state of affairs? Media analyst Clay Shirky says that it might actually be a good thing, because it will spur experimentation. Let’s hope he is right. Read More »
More Must Reads
Skype quietly added some XMPP support to its most recentbeta last week. Adopting the open protocol helps Sype to integrate with Facebook, but it could also be used for interoperability with other IM platforms. Just don’t expect to call your Gtalk friends any time soon. Read More »
Arianna Huffington has made much of her ambitions to expand into Europe and beyond — but with just two weeks until the British version of the site launches, the evidence suggests it might not be as aggressive as its American parent. Read More »
Some media outlets are hoping that launching iPad subscriptions and paywalls will supplement the meager revenue they get from traditional online banner advertising, but AOL’s Patch and Hearst Magazines’ digital media are experimenting with some more innovative ways of monetizing their content as well. Read More »
AOL has made two huge bets — one the $315-million purchase of The Huffington Post and the other the expansion of its Patch.com hyperlocal news effort. Which is more likely to save AOL? With editorial turmoil and Patch’s high costs, the right answer may be neither. Read More »
Former AOL CEO Steve Case and former Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin are reuniting to help spur on innovation in health and wellness. Levin, with the help of Case’s Startup America Partnership, is launching a new strategic initiative called StartUp Health designed to help health entrepreneurs. … Read More »
Last week, investors poured money into ShopIgniter and Milyoni, companies that build Facebook storefronts for merchants and retailers. Many are skeptical about that opportunity, but with thousands of merchants building Facebook stores, it’s worth examining the challenges and what could make those stores effective shopping vehicles. Read More »
I sat down with Case on Friday at the TiE Silicon Valley conference to discuss how he’s advocating for entrepreneur-friendly policies at a governmental level. Entrepreneurs, meanwhile, should focus on building companies they’re passionate about, rather than looking for a money-making “quick flip,” he said. Read More »
Shutterfly CEO Jeff Housenbold is aware of new photo sharing and printing startups like Instagram, Sincerely, and Keepsy. But according to him, new competition from “three kids in a garage with $3 million in venture funding” doesn’t exactly keep him up at night. Read More »
AOL continues to pour money into its Patch.com “hyperlocal” news venture, and is also rolling out a Huffington Post-style aggregation effort called Local Voices aimed at pulling in local bloggers. But can any of this help AOL dig itself out of the financial hole it’s in? Read More »
Among reports that it was having trouble unloading $1 billion worth of shares at a very rich valuation, Facebook last week tweaked an existing advertising service and started testing its first home-grown social commerce product: Facebook Deals. Will that be Facebook’s next … Read More »
Last week, the bipartisan Kerry-McCain bill proposed legislation on a Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights that would put the FTC in charge of policing the online collection, sharing and use of personal information. That has far-reaching implications for the online media business. Read More »
The mass defection of the Engadget staff to a site run by SB Nation does two things — reinforces how SB Nation could become a major player in the media space, and shines a spotlight on one of the major weaknesses in AOL’s growth plans. Read More »
One of Arianna Huffington’s first decisions since selling up to AOL is to expand the website to the U.K — but she may discover that the rest of the world isn’t as hungry for her brand of news as the American market. Read More »
AOL has made the acquisition of The Huffington Post sound like a nice add-on for its existing content business, but the reality is that AOL had to do something dramatic, since traffic has been plummeting and losses increasing at some of its major media properties. Read More »
With just a few paragraphs about the evils of aggregation and the rise of the Huffington Post, in which he talks about aggregators as “pirates,” the executive editor of the New York Times manages to say volumes about how little he understands where media is now. Read More »
AOL has agreed to acquire Outside.in, a hyper-local news aggregator, for substantially less than investors put into the company. Like many other experiments in hyper-local news, it failed to connect with the communities it was supposed to be serving, and that is the kiss of death. … Read More »
AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong has been busy signing content-production deals with celebrities like former supermodel Heidi Klum and singer Queen Latifah — but can this new Hollywood-focused strategy produce enough financial bang to make a difference to a fading web giant like AOL? Read More »
AOL’s recent acquisition of the Huffington Post for $315 million has centered a lot of attention on its content strategy — automating and standardizing content that attracts search-related advertising. While there are some clear benefits to this “content farm” approach to content, there are also significant … Read More »
The sale of The Huffington Post has some concerned we are entering an age of digital sharecropping, in which writers toil for nothing while landowners get rich. But all the web has really done is accelerate a phenomenon that has long existed in the media game. Read More »
As the online media game gets increasingly saturated, a new land rush is building in the hyper-local market, according to Topix CEO Chris Tolles, who says AOL’s ambitious rollout of its Patch.com network of local news sites is just the beginning of the land grab. Read More »
In less than six years, Arianna Huffington and her team built a media operation second only to the New York Times in terms of traffic, and almost as valuable, while traditional news organizations have struggled to grow online. Why? Because they have too much to lose. Read More »
With AOL, Demand Media and Yahoo all investing heavily in creating huge networks, “content farms” are clearly here to stay. But how far can they go? A team of journalists and computer scientists is conducting an experiment to see if the news can be completely automated. Read More »
AOL dropped a bombshell on the online media world late Sunday night with the news that it is acquiring popular blog network The Huffington Post for $315 million. Here’s a roundup of some of the other commentary on the announcement from the web and from Twitter. Read More »
Although it is far from a guaranteed win, AOL’s purchase of the Huffington Post makes a lot of sense for both sides. The latter gets the scale it couldn’t afford to build on its own, and AOL gets someone to take charge of its content strategy. Read More »
AOL dropped a late night bomb – it bought The Huffington Post for $315 million – of which $300 million is in cash. But when you get over the initial ka-pow reaction, and start thinking about the deal, not everything adds-up. Here is my breakdown of … Read More »
Steve Case, the founder of AOL and architect of the disastrous merger with media giant Time Warner in 2000, has been using the question-and-answer site Quora to respond to critics of that deal, and also to share his thoughts about the new AOL. Read More »
Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo, is returning to where it all began, signing on as an investor and advisor to the social network he built and later sold to AOL for $850 million. Read More »
Bebo, the once high-flying social network is getting ready to be sold – again! This would be the third time the company started by Michael Birch and Xochi Birch is getting buyer attention. Who’s interested? Large media companies, for starters, who are interested in the social … Read More »
AOL managed to beat analysts’ estimates for revenue and earnings for the latest quarter, thanks in part to some asset sales that boosted the bottom line. But the company’s advertising business continues to shrink rapidly, even as it’s spending hundreds of millions on acquisitions. Read More »
AOL’s reported interest in merging with Yahoo seems more like a desperation move or a Hail Mary pass than any kind of coherent strategy for success on the part of either company. Neither has shown any evidence that it understands the new realities of the web. Read More »
As I looked back over the past five years, there were some seminal moments that helped shape Michael Arrington’s — and thus TechCrunch’s — destiny. We created this infographic, which is the story of TechCrunch. Read More »
AOL is buying three companies — TechCrunch, 5Min, and Brizzly — for a rumored $100 million. AOL is trying to regain its preeminence in tech-land by focusing on building media brands and platforms that help other media, CEO TIm Armstrong tells us. Read More »
AOL said it has purchased the technology blogging site TechCrunch for an undisclosed amount, a story Om broke last night. While we don’t know yet how much AOL paid for the blog network founded by Michael Arrington, we’ll update this story as details emerge. Read More »
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