Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » HuffingtonPost.com

Viral Tracking Pop Culture Website BuzzFeed Raises $15.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:10:24 +0000

BuzzFeed is one of my most favorite time-pass websites because they have interesting galleries and lists of pop culture. BuzzFeed has raised $15.5 million in Series C funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Other investors that participated include Lerer Ventures, Hearst Media, SoftBank, and RRE Capital. NEA General Partner Patrick Kerins will be joining the BuzzFeed board of directors. Ken Lerer, the Huffington Post co-founder and BuzzFeed board member, will become the BuzzFeed executive chairman.

Former Huffington Post President Greg Coleman is also joining the BuzzFeed board of directors. BuzzFeed was founded by co-founded by Jonah Peretti, who was the former CTO of The Huffington Post before the company was acquired by AOL.

BuzzFeed has recently hit some major milestones. For example, the company has tripled their traffic to 25 million monthly unique visitors in the past year. They hired Politico’s Ben Smith to serve as the head editor. And recently they broke the news about how John McCain was going to endorse Mitt Romney before CNN and other news agencies.

[TechCrunch]

Former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde Leaves AOL

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:30:02 +0000

AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) is having a hard time retaining some of their talent. Within the last couple of days, AOL saw Brad Garlinghouse and Sarah Lacy leave the company. Now former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde is leaving the company. Harde became an executive at AOL after technology blog TechCrunch was acquired. It is believed that Harde was pissed when a Huffington Post CEO sent out an e-mail bashing TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.

On the Silicon Alley 100 list, Arianna Huffington was ranked number one in a listing about the most influential people in the New York tech scene. A Huffington Post publicist sent out a company-wide e-mail congratulation Arianna Huffington and it included a citation from Silicon Alley Insider saying “Huffington is more powerful than ever at AOL after she had Michael Arrington of TechCrunch booted for conflicts of interest when he decided to become a VC.”

Harde responded several hours later with her own staff-wide e-mail about the snub:

From: Heather Harde
Date: October 5, 2011 5:29:01 PM EDT
To: Mario Ruiz
Cc: [Huffington Post Media Group]
Subject: Re: Silicon Alley 100 goes live … at #1 … Arianna

Classy inclusion of the full SAI description, thx.

Would be nice also to recognize other folks within the AOL family on the list:
Tim Armstrong, CEO: http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-alley-100-2011#tim-armstrong-7
Warren Webster and Brian Farnham, Patch: http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-alley-100-2011#warren-webster-and-brian-farnham-97
Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch: http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-alley-100-2011#erick-schonfeld-98

Best,
Heather

AOL Posts Revenue Of $532 Million For Q3

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:58:36 +0000

AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) has posted revenues of $532 million with an earnings loss of $0.02 per share. This is great news for the company because Wall Street was expecting the company to hit $524 million and a loss of $0.06 per share. The company was able to gain revenue from their gains in The Huffington Post and the TechCrunch acquisitions.

However Wall Street is looking for AOL to grow their core display businesses and for the company to improve their earnings. AOL’s ad sales were up 8% and display ads were up 15%. Domestic display growth saw a 14% sequential decline from last quarter’s 16% rise. AOL properties saw a 1% gain even after the two large acquisitions.

Even though AOL acquired Huffington Post and TechCrunch, the company’s website traffic barely moved. A year ago, AOL was hitting 106 million monthly unique visitors to their website. And this year, the total was only 107 million.

The Huffington Post Acquires Localocracy

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:58:24 +0000

The Huffington Post Media Group has acquired online grassroots company Localocracy. The price of Localocracy was under $1 million according to sources with AllThingsD. The Huffington Post, which hit one billion page views in August, also announced that they were hiring New York Times senior columnist Lisa Belkin.

The Huffington Post is launching four new sections this week – Huff/Post50, HuffPost Gay Voices, HuffPost Weddings, and HuffPost High School. Now the Huffington Post has a grand total of 21 new websites since merging with AOL this past March.

“We want to launch sections for every interest and passion our readers have.” said HuffPost head Arianna Huffington in an interview yesterday. “Whatever your interest, we want to provide the latest content and stories and most advanced tools for engagement.”

The Huffington Post Hits 100 Million Comments

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 02:59:10 +0000

The Huffington Post has hit 100 million comments added to their website. The milestone was hit this past weekend. The Huffington Post averages about 175,000 new comments per day with over 4.45 million comments from last month itself.

“From the first day when we had hardly any resources to spend on it, we committed ourselves to moderating comments,” said The Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington in an interview with Mashable. The Huffington Post employs about 30 comment moderators that works with a back-end moderator. The Huffington Post ensures that interesting comments remain at the top of the discussion.

Readers and commenters can earn badges and extra privileges (rich text commenting for example). Soon The Huffington Post readers will have the ability to give each other badges like “LOL” and the insightful “pundit” badge. There will also be a leader-board of top commenters. AOL acquired The Huffington Post for $315 million this past February.

Jai Singh Leaves Huffington Post To Join Yahoo!

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:01:28 +0000

Jai Singh has stepped down from AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) subsidiary The Huffington Post to join Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). Singh will become the editor-in-chief of the Yahoo! Media Network. He was a managing editor at the Huffington Post Media Group. Singh will be responsible for increasing original content and performance at all of Yahoo!’s leading brands. [paidContent]

After Suing Huffington Post For Not Paying Writers, Jonathan Tasini Gets Caught Himself

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 05:12:12 +0000

Jonathan Tasini is a freelancer that is suing The Huffington Post for not paying bloggers. You may remember that The Huffington Post was acquired by AOL for $315 million. It turns out that Tasini has a blog of his own where he invites people to contribute without pay also.

Tasini’s blog is called Working Life and it was launched in 2004 as a “community of people who want to discuss, share ideas and exchange information and stories about work, the economy and labor.” Although Tasini does not have any ads on his website, his About page offers instructions on how to buy ad space.

Gawker decided to call him out on not paying for writers either. Gawker started out by asking if he has ever sold any ads. Below is an excerpt from Gawker’s blog post about the interview:

“It hasn’t had any ads in several years, but there were a couple unions that did buy some advertising,” he said. “They wanted to support the work I was doing.” So how much of that did he kick back to commenters and readers whose e-mails he ran? “There was never a thought that we would do that,” he said. “Oh, I see what you’re doing. Are you comparing my little blog to the Huffington Post? That’s absurd.”

[Gawker]

AOL/Huffington Post Hit With Lawsuit, Download Squad Blog Gets Shut Down

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:16:24 +0000

Lawsuit
AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) is being hit with a lawsuit by bloggers of the Huffington Post who believe that they should have been paid for their volunteer writing. The lawsuit is being led by lawsuit Jonathan Tasini. The class-action lawsuit was filed against The Huffington Post, AOL, and Arianna Huffington. AOL acquired The Huffington Post in February.

Tasini joined The Huffington Post as a blogger in December 2005. He stopped writing posts on February 10th, three days after AOL acquired The Huffington Post. Tasini was the lead plaintiff in the case New York Times Co. vs. Tasini. The plaintiffs won in that case.

This isn’t the first time AOL was sued for unpaid labor. In 1999, two Community Leader chatroom moderators sued AOL over violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. That lawsuit was resolved with a $15 million settlement.

Download Squad
As part of a consolidation of web properties, AOL subsidiary The Huffington Post decided to shut down the popular software blog Download Squad. When AOL shut down Download Squad, the writers were notified that they would be unemployed effective immediately.

Download Squad editor Sebastian Anthony wrote a tweet saying “In a world where software is moving towards ubiquity, AOL-HuffPo has seen fit to shut down the best software blog on the Web. Insane.”

Download Squad was a part of AOL Tech. AOL Tech includes brands such as TechCrunch, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), Switched, and Engadget. Download Squad was a part of Weblogs, Inc.

[Forbes/ZDNet]

Politics Daily, Walletpop, Urlesque, TV Square, and Luxist To Be Folded Into Other AOL Brands

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:15:08 +0000

AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) has just notified some of their staff members that they are going to consolidate some of their media properties. About 30 brands will be integrated into other properties as proposed by editor in chief Arianna Huffington. The properties include:
- Politics Daily being rolled into HuffPost Politics
- Walletpop being rolled into Daily Finance
- Urlesque being rolled into HuffPost Comedy
- Luxist being folded into Stylelist
- TV Squad being rolled into AOL TV
- Other AOL properties will keep their names, but will essentially become sub-headings within The Huffington Post

[Forbes]

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Hired As “Social Impact” Strategic Adviser For AOL

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:04:33 +0000

AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) has hired Twitter co-founder Biz Stone as the “social impact” strategic adviser for the company. This will help with the integration of The Huffington Post into AOL. Stone will help AOL launch cause-based initiatives like helping people volunteer in communities. Stone will also be developing a video series for AOL that is related to philanthropy. AOL has also hired former New York Times editor John Montorio and former MSNBC analyst Howard Fineman. [WSJ]