You know who won the Super Bowl? Arianna Huffington. This afternoon our parent company Aol bought Huffington Post for $315 million according to a press release. Gah.
The Huffington Post, with its 26 million monthly unique visitors is huge, one of the most prominent media properties on the Internet because of its aggressive SEO stance. And the company has gone through the acquisition motions before, most notably Yahoo. Apparently this time it stuck.
In this video, Armstrong and Huffington recall the acquisition process: The two met in November and Huffington was impressed with the “surprising merger” of their vision. And no doubt the sizable amount of the Aol offer, which at $315 million is just under 5x Huffington Post’s expected revenue for next year. The talks took three months. “This is my last act,” Huffington said.
Back in June we pegged a possible Aol and Yahoo deal at around $360 million, Aol paid $45 million less than that at $315 million this time.
To all of you making HuffingtonCrunch and Crunchington Post jokes, Huffington’s official title will be Editor In Chief in charge of all Aol properties, including Engadget, Urlesque and yes us. Welcome to the family, Arianna.
You can read more about how we feel about this acquisition here and here.
This news was first reported by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD.
The Huffington Post is a leading online news source founded by Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer, and Jonah Peretti. Contributors include more than 3,000 bloggers—from politicians and celebrities to academics and policy experts—who contribute in real-time on a wide-range of topics. The site started as a politics blog, but now covers more than 20 categories, including media, business, entertainment, living, style, sustainable “green” living, world news, technology, nonprofits, college life, and comedy. It began launching local versions in 2008,...
AOL is a global advertising-supported Web company, with display advertising network in the U.S., a substantial worldwide audience, and a suite of popular Web brands and products. The company’s strategy focuses on increasing the scale and sophistication of its advertising platform and growing the size and engagement of its global online audience through leading products and programming. History of Aol: AOL was founded in the early 1980’s as Control Video Corp, with an online service, Gameline, for the Atari 2600 console. ...
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
