Huffington Post and AOL Now Sister Companies

When the CEO of your company sends an e-mail, you read it right away.

So you know that it's big news when a little past 9 p.m. PST on Super Bowl Sunday, in my inbox I see an e-mail from Tim Armstrong, chief executive officer of AOL—Patch's parent company. It said that Monday "we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post."

The Huff Post! That's one of the biggest online news and commentary sites on the Internet, because of the type of people who contribute. I mean, where else would you find an opinion piece by Alec Baldwin next to one by Craig Newmark. Where else could a struggling graduate student have a forum to write about the 2008 presidential election? The Huff Post? Right on!

But how will that affect Patch? According to Armstrong, together AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117 million unduplicated domestic monthly unique visitors and approximately 270 million monthly unique visitors worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010). That's a lot of people going online to read and engage in online content—and hopefully some Huff Post readers will now discover Patch!

"In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform," Armstrong said. "This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way."

Arianna Huffington, founder of The Hufffington Post, brings a lot of energy and ideas especially as it relates to women's issues, an area where Patch wants to delve further. She's one of the most powerful women in online media, and that's an inspiration.

She will join AOL’s executive team as president and editor in chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will integrate all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList and more.

"To be able to capture all that with Patch is incredibly important," said Huffington to Patch staff.

So let's give a Patchy welcome to our Huffington Post colleagues! Welcome!

Claudia Cruz is the editor of Mountain View Patch.