It was only a month ago that AOL agreed to acquire the Huffington Post for $315 million. Now, the deal has been finalized. Arianna Huffington is officially President and Editor in Chief of what is now called the Huffington Post Media Group: “a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community, and digital information.” This group includes all of AOL’s properties, including TechCrunch.
AOL claims that the combined entity will have a user base of 117 million unique visitors per month in the United States and 253 million around the world. AOL has also expanded their editorial team with a number of talented writers:
- Yahoo’s Michael Calderone has been named Senior Media Reporter
- New York Times’ Trymaine Lee has been named Senior Reporter
- New York Daily News’ Michael McAuliff has been named Senior Congressional Reporter
- The Daily’s Jon Ward has been named Senior Political Reporter
- Bonnie Kavoussi will be Business Reporter
- Lucas Kavner has been named Entertainment Reporter
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong says this is his largest deal to date. He adds that the driving factor behind the deal is how well the Huffington Post illustrates the content platform he is trying to build. In particular, around influential women and local (his 80-80-80 strategy).
via TechCrunch, Business Wire