From the Editor's Desk

Yesterday AOL CEO Tim Armstrong inked a deal with Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington buying the successful news blog for $315 million.

Patch is owned by AOL, and is Armstrong's brainchild.

Huffington said in a post that she and Armstrong began talks in January, and finalized the deal yesterday at the Super Bowl in Dallas.

"This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more," Armstrong said in a memo to employees. "This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post."

A few bullets about what this deal brings to the market:

·      Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

·      The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet.  It grew 22% last year – that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% - and 15x as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

·      Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.

·      AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

·      Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers.

"Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader—one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information," Armstrong said.

"Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience," he added. "By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable – social, local, video, mobile and tablet."