Week 4: AOL Huffington Post Merger

My inspiration for this weeks post is this WSJ article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704858404576129234044123852.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_technology

About the AOL, Huffington Post Merger.

The article states that AOL and the Huffington Post have merged, with the Huffington Post making $315m on the deal. The article also mentions that AOL is looking to expand its news, entertainment and digital content.

AOL was once the internet equivelant for me. When I thought internet, I thought AOL. Before facebook, this was how people were using the internet to communicate and stay up to date. However, for reasons that I do not know, I feel that AOL lost a lot of its momentum coming in to the digital age. It now represents images of “acient” technology and the terrible dial-up noise.

This change of perspective and business practice that AOL has gained from the merger I think is a step in the right direction. By changing their service to be more digitial information, they are able to once again use their name to help market themselves as internet leaders. The Huffington Post has been doing a great job as an internet-only newspaper, one of the first of its kind. With AOL’s size, and the Post’s innovation and business model the merger could be great for both companies. It is important that the services that customers are receiving does not change drastically. For instance, if customers are requred to pay for the new services, it could do damage to the Post’s reputation.

I think it will be interesting to see, in the coming months, how AOL and the Huffington Post collaborate and move forward with their merger. I think both companies can benefit , and complement each other if they can agree on a particular business model that is customer orientated. With the influx of information readily available on the internet, and websites like twitter that allow users to share imformation freely and quickly, AOL and the Post have interesting road blocks in their growth. But the potential is there.

What do you think? Is this merger good for the companies? Do you think anything will change? Do you think that this could lead to great innovations?