Huffington Post Media Group has acquired Localocracy, a community-focused Web forum, which would accelerate its coverage of local issues. The acquisition would help them in covering such issues ahead of 2012 presidential elections. The company even announced that they would come up with four new sites, which would be Huff/Post50, HuffPost Gay Voices, HuffPost Weddings and HuffPost High School. Being a part of AOL Inc. (AOL), Huffington Post Media Group is led by Arianna Huffington.
Huffington Post noted that the their website had logged in more than 1 billion page views and 37 million readers in August. The stats for the same were updated by measurement firm ComScore Inc. Based in New York, AOL said that since the company acquired Huffington Post in March, it has had an introduction of 21 new sites.
Apart from the company introducing a number of new sites and acquiring other sources, Huffington Post even has got a new extension in the form of Lisa Belkin, former New York Times columnist, who penned the Motherlode blog for the newspaper. Lisa has switched to Huffington Post last month and here her responsibility would be to cover parenting and family issues.
Some might know the thought process adopted by Huffington Post Media Group, when the company opted to acquire Localocracy, but others might still have a lingering thought in their minds regarding this acquisition of the former over the latter. Localocracy had termed itself as “an online forum for residents and decision makers to weigh in on issues facing their community.” Arianna Huffington even could not avoid the fact that the four-person Boston start-up, was acquired by AOL to include them as a part of a team, which would foster participation in local government and communities through Huffington Post and the Patch.
Globe noted that the Huffington Post’s focus on “engagement” has made this deal an appealing one as it was said by Localocracy’s CEO Conor White-Sullivan. Whatever may be the case, but Huffington was all praise for Localocracy as it was noted, “They’re pioneers in using the Web to empower citizens to improve their towns.”
The exact terms of payment was not detailed, but noting Huffington’s comment, it was said that the acquisition was made ‘for less than $1 million’. AOL’s Huffington Post acquisition was made in March and the amount they announced was $315 million.
On the financial terms, AOL has not had a bad outing this year. Recording its update, the company fell 60 cents, or 5 percent, to $11.40 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. On the other hand, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index showed that the company had lost 2.9 percent, to close at 1099.23. Talking about the company on the whole for the year 2011, there has been a 52 percent fall recorded. The steps seems to be a good one and could help AOL regain its standing in the Wall Street.