The news spread quickly, aided by PR and the characteristic web glee anytime an online property appears to be leaving old media in the dust: the September numbers for *comScore* and Nielsen showed Arianna Huffington and The Huffington Post beating WashingtonPost.com in unique visitors for the first time. Coincidentally, just about when I was explaining on Twitter why that’s a meaningless metric to me, I wound up scheduling some time with Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau for his first deep dive since moving from board member to running the show in June. (Turns out a project he championed — Social News with Facebook Connect — may have had the biggest single impact on pushing the numbers. More on that below.)
I kicked off the lengthy interview by explaining my take on the “beat WaPo” meme: an online site beating traditional media for attention isn’t really news anymore — and HuffPo is no longer only a news-and-politics site going head-to-head with WashingtonPost.com in its own backyard. Ever the diplomat, Hippeau said he could see my points but quickly added: “It wasn’t so much the Washington Post — by the way, it

{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2009\/10\/19\/419-huffpo-ceo-eric-hippeau-we-are-now-in-the-big-leagues\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_3fd9ca71169f6b95f0669fe4f1aaaf8c","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}