Newswise — Josh Braun, Cornell University doctoral candidate in communication, comments on the sale of the Huffington Post to AOL. He researches how new-media newsrooms work.
He says:
“The Huffington Post was one of the breakaway successes to emerge from a span of heavy experimentation with social news among tech startups. In addition to Huffington Post, the period between late 2004 and early 2006 saw the emergence of Digg, reddit, TechMeme, and Newsvine – just to name a few.
“Huffington Post distinguished itself through a heavy focus on editorial strategy and side-door distribution—bringing in visitors through search engine optimization and well-placed links, rather than assuming that most users would click through the front page.
“It's likely that AOL is just as interested in picking up Huffington Post's philosophy of producing and promoting content as it is in acquiring the family of sites themselves. Whether the success of this strategy was the product of a particular political and economic moment, or whether it will continue to allow Huffington Post and AOL to succeed economically in the content arena over the longer term is an open question, but I think the site will retain its present character, precisely because AOL would rather not mess with success, and in fact is banking on it.
“Likewise, I'd expect other sites in AOL's brand family to maintain their distinctiveness. The company now has a broad and widening portfolio of news and commentary sites, and I doubt they have any interest in homogenizing them, but will instead seek to use their distinctive qualities to leverage different segments of the online news market.’
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