Yesterday I linked to Scott Rosenberg’s pessimistic take on the AOL purchase of the Huffington Post. Felix Salmon is, on the other hand, optimistic about the deal. His argument is that the venture capitalists funding the Huffington Post and the CEO that they chose did a lot more to stifle the creativity of Arianna Huffington and the writers at the Huffington Post than AOL will.
Today, he follows in by comparing an originally reported blog post from the New York Times to a Huffington Post item linking to that post and argues that the chaos of the Huffington Post will beat out the New York Times over time. Of course, to me, the Huffington Post page is Hell on the Web, but to each their own.
If Arianna Huffington is a major strategic asset in the realm of Web publishing, his take on the deal is probably correct. I do not see Arianna Huffington as a major strategic asset.
February 8, 2011 at 6:54 pm
A. Huffington will do for AOL what the Red Sox selling the Babe to the Yankees