Two politicos who sued Arianna Huffington and her partner for stealing their idea for the Huffington Post will get to go forward after a New… Read more at paidContent »
This month, Lisa Belkin announced that she was leaving her popular parenting blog at the New York Times, Motherlode, to launch a parenting b… Read more at paidContent »
AOL has seen a ton of growth in its video properties over the last year, and is looking to bolster that part of its business even more, with a slate of web original content designed to capture viewer attention and steal TV ad dollars. Read more »
The AOL (NYSE: AOL) Huffington Post Media Group is the latest news organization to become an e-book publisher. The site will release two tit… Read more at paidContent »
After building up millions of users in the last eight years, DIY travel website Couchsurfing has stepped it up by going for-profit and taking venture funding. But some aggrieved users feel that they’ve become pawns in a game… and they aren’t happy. Read more »
The impact of digital technology has shattered long-established monopolies and ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry. Today, publishers must find ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly, and this report examines a few different approaches, from more flexible paywalls to charging users directly for access and mimicking the business models of other industries, such as online gaming. Companies mentioned in this report include Ford, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
An incident involving an article that “over-aggregated” one from Advertising Age has proven to be another handy stick for some to beat The Huffington Post with. But it doesn’t change the fact that aggregation is still a crucial — and valuable — part of the future of media. 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 »
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 »
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 »
If there’s one thing The Huffington Post does better than just about any other media entity, it’s take advantage of social media — and the site has just rolled out some new features that traditional publishers and media entities could learn some useful lessons from. Read more »
The first quarter of 2011 saw plenty of competition between various web companies — and some heated tension, too. Content farms generated the most debate, with Demand Media’s IPO attracting attention and controversy and Google making a major change to its ranking algorithm. Facebook, meanwhile, maintained its heavyweight status online, but this time the social network’s impact was centered on social search, unified communications and comment systems. And Facebook’s ongoing dominance raised the question, Is there room for more than one social network? If niche networks like Quora and Color are any indication, the answer is “yes.” Additional companies mentioned in this report include Twitter, Groupon, Microsoft, LinkedIn and MySpace. To see the full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
For anyone trying to understand why bloggers would give their content for free to a site like The Huffington Post — which is being sued by contributors for as much as $100 million — here’s a related question: Why do some programmers choose to create open-source software? 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 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 — big part of which is 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 some significant disadvantages. Here we look at some of the leaders in this sector and their histories, as well as the key risks and benefits of the content farm strategy. Companies mentioned in this report include AOL, The Huffington Post, MySpace, Demand Media, Google and Associated Content. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
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 »
Today on the Net: Break Media’s CEO questions AOL’s video strategy with The Huffington Post on board, the MPAA is suing cyberlocker service Hotfile and Thwapr’s new iPhone app lets users share up to 30-minute video files. 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 »
Taking a cue from Foursquare, the Huffington Post has launched a new feature that awards “badges” to regular readers of the news site, based on how much they connect with other readers and also whether they link their HuffPo accounts with other sites such as Facebook. Read more »
