AOL to acquire news blog service `The Huffington Post' for $315 million

07 Feb 2011

AOL, the online media company, has agreed to acquire news blog service The Huffington Post for $315 million as the company continued to gobble up several smaller content firms.

Post acquisition, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post's co-founder and editor-in-chief, will take over as president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which would include all Huffington Post and AOL content, the companies said in a joint statement.

The left-of-centre blog service is known for its political coverage, as also its blogs on sports, entertainment and local news in selective markets.

According an executive of AOL-Huffington Huffington's sales were expected to touch $50 million in 2011.

In an email message to CNN's Christine Romans, Huffington said her blog had 26 million visitors a month. She added that AOL had a total of 110 million unique visitors a month in the US and 250 million unique visitors worldwide.

Huffington counted doing more for women among her goals from the deal: "to do so much more in the living space especially for women, (and) to do more and more original reporting telling the stories of our time and putting flesh and blood on the economic data."