Washington Examiner, Feb.7th,2011 – Online company AOL Inc. is buying online news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news.
New York Post, Feb.9th, 2011 – AOL has shed $315 million in value over the last five trading days…
One problem with this acquisition is that while many writers were willing to provide free content for Arianna Huffington (all in the progressive cause), far fewer might be willing to do so for a big evil corporation like AOL.
Even though AH is apparently a capitalist through and through.
From the New York Post comments,
“$315M is an historical world record for the price paid for a prostitute.”
ouch! I feel kinda guilty for laughing outloud at that one.
A risky move for AOL which has been sliding into irrelevancy over the last several years, dropping from ~31M dial up subscribers a few years ago, to ~4M today. AOL is very late to the content game, and I’m not quite certain they’ll muscle much market share away from the established players.
rabbit also makes an excellent point. The HuffPo “business model,” such as it is, may not survive a transition into the corporate world.
They have no choice rabbit. Like me, nobody will pay to read our iSht.
I remember AOL.
their installation CDs made great coasters.
If they could have bought SDA for $315 million they would have done much better.
Yeah Walter, but I still wouldn’t get paid:(
That’s amazing. AOL is still around?
Good money after bad.
“$315M is an historical world record for the price paid for a prostitute.” ouch! I feel kinda guilty for laughing outloud at that one.”
I on the other hand feel no guilt whatsoever. BWAHAHAHAHAH!!
So market wisdom values Arianna and the HuffPo at exactly sweet FA.
Nice.
Any bets as to how long before AOL is sitting on the same bench as Blockbusters in Bankruptcy Court?
Will AOL do to HuffPo what they did to Netscape?