AOL Beats out Yahoo for purchase of Huffpo

If you recall, TechCrunch reported that Yahoo was going to purchase Huffpo for an undisclosed amount - estimated over $200 million. Well, it looks like Tim Armstrong (former google exec - Current Pres of AOL) won the battle to buy one of the leading online publishers.

Content seems to be king for the portal strategy going forward. Seems like the portals are much less interested in search and more interested in content for this decade and round of M&A.

Love to see that the largest blog has been acquired, and once again a tribute to what's happening with M&A in the social media space. I anticipate many more acquisitions here in 2011, especially if the stock market can hold its gains.

Arianna Huffington @ ThinkLA Trends Breakfast

It was a great pleasure seeing Arianna Huffington present at last week's ThinkLA trends breakfast. She really enchanted the audience bringing them into her fold and view of social media.

Arianna is really well grounded, and discussed some of the key advantages and disadvantages of always being connected. Her view is to allow social media to connect people, but never to allow social media to replace personal interactions. Rather, social media should only be an extension of those natural interactions.

In addition, she warned us of "good and evil" uses of social media, and really asked the audience to help promote and advocate positive uses.

Regarding a potential run for public office in the future, Arianna plainly stated, "that a person would have to be a masochist in today's media landscape to engage is such a dysfunctional system". Unfortunately she's absolutely correct. Who would want to get punished in the press, have their family and reputation criticized to such an extreme.

Really enjoyed the show, and had a chance to shake her hand following the presentation. I was very delighted to see Arianna present. On behalf of BuzzLogic, we were very proud to sponsor and participate in the event!

Thank you Sara Morton and ThinkLA for inviting us to sponsor and participate...

TechCrunch on Huffpo

About a week ago Tech Crunch claimed that Huffpo is in play, and likely to be purchased by Yahoo. Well, it's not exactly new news, and Arianna is denying it today: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/06/08/huffington-post-not-for-sale-co-founder-says/

Although nobody is quite certain if The Huffington is still a blog, as it has lost most of the traditional characteristics of a blog, it's very interesting and important to the grand daddy of blogs on the blog for a potential mega sale. This is encouraging news for all those out there writing blogs with hopes of one day hitting it big.

I've been trying to hit it big in the blogosphere for 3 years from the ad side of the business. We'll have to see, hope and pray that there's some active M&A here in the blogosphere in late 2010 or perhaps 2011.

Here's the original post from Erick @ TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/04/yahoo-huffpo/