AOL to Acquire Huffington Post

Patch's parent company, AOL, announced Sunday its plans to acquire the influential online news site, The Huffington Post. Founded in 2005, the Post now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors.* 

As part of the deal,  Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post's co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will integrate all content from AOL and the Post. 

 "In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform," AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said in his announcement of the deal. 

The new news group, to be called the The Huffington Post Media Group, will include Patch as well asEngadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest and other current AOL-owned content sites. The  group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world.** 

"Bringing The Huffington Post's ability to stimulate conversation around critical topics to Patch's hyper-local communities represents an unprecedented opportunity with game-changing scale," the company said in a release.

While it's not yet clear what this means for Patch, it's exciting to have a journalist and innovator of the caliber of Arianna Huffington at the helm of this new venture. Stay tuned for great things to come. 

*comScore, December 2010
**comScore, December 2010