Huff Post and the midas touch?

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Redesign of the Huffington Post

The last time AOL bought an internet company, Bebo, they expertly lost a huge amount of money on it. Expertly I say, because the time before that, AOL infamously managed to lose a large amount of money when they merged with Time Warner when 'new media merged with traditional media'. They are not alone in their misfortunes in buying internet companies. The TV network, ITV,bought 'Friends Reunited' for a large sum only to sell it off at a fraction of the price they paid for it a few years later.

Many reports I have read on the latest purchase by AOL of The Huffington Post have been predicting the same demise of this deal citing the drop in traffic to the website of the 'Huff Post' as the indication that AOL is, once again, managing to turn dollars into dimes.

But, with Friends United, the idea was not wrong and, in fact, it still lives on in the form of Facebook, as does Bebo. The problem for Bebo and Friends Reunited was they were not as easy to use as Facebook. When AOL merged with Time Warner, the idea was good but they were such different businesses that it was hard to see how they could work together.

You just have to watch this video (A CEO's View of the Future) from the 'Digital Book World Conference' in New York this year where one of the CEO's of a publishing company states that he is running two businesses side by side now instead of one. A digital business and a traditional, print based business. That's not so different from AOL and Time Warner. AOL and Time Warner were just ahead of their time.

The great thing about the Huffington Post is how approachable they are. You can post comments on their news. There are citizen journalists and bloggers contributing to the site. You can view the news through their website, through your RSS reader or through their new 'NewsGlide' application.

They are not alone in their approach to news either. Traditional newspapers like the British newspaper, 'The Telegraph', has become increasingly approachable, allowing comments and different ways to read their news. I, for one, read that newspaper on my Amazon Kindle everyday now, whereas before I irregularly bought the print version.

So, I'm not sure that this latest AOL deal will be a disaster like the others mentioned above. The idea is good. The experience is good and the technology is good. Importantly, the news on the Huff Post is good too.
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