AOL to buy Huffington Post for $315M in savvy desperation move

Come for the crazy, stay for the Viagra email spam.

...effort to reshape a fallen Internet icon... [can you reshape a corpse?]

...AOL will be adding Huffington Post co-founder and media star Arianna Huffington to its management team as part of the deal... [She was the 2nd choice, the Obama turned them down]

...Huffington will be put in charge of AOL's growing array of content... [I can't wait, can you?]

...The price that AOL is paying is "really just the hiring fee to get Arianna,"... [Translation: she found some greater fools]

...makes a lot of sense. This could put AOL back on the map."

Pic of Tim Armstrong, AOL CEO, surveying his investment strategy below the fold. Last year AOL only lost $782M. Armstrong said "2011 is the year we stop working on the turnaround and start working on the comeback." AOL doesn't need a turnaround specialist, it needs Jack Kevorkian.

[Update] DaTechguy makes an astute comment about what AOL is getting as a "freebie" along with the HuffPo framework:

...When you are buying something like the HuffPo you are not only buying the structure and the “writers” so to speak, you are also buying the commentators...

posted by Purp at 05:27 AM

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