The Huffington Post is looking to double its audience within the next two years as it seeks to form partnerships with struggling newspapers, according to a report in the FT.

AOL plans to launch The Huffington Post into ten more international markets in the next two years having already launched into Canada and the UK in 2011. Read More »

BuzzFeed the site best known for offbeat stories (“what cats want for Christmas”), gossip and viral videos has hired a star reporter from US politics site, Politico.com, with the aim of building what is being described as the “first real social news organization”.

Ben Smith, who was a senior political writer at Politico.com, will be editor-in-chief at BuzzFeed and will be responsible for building a news organisation that will produce original content and have a focus on how best to share this via the social web. Read More »

A few weeks back a post went up about how twice as many get their news via Facebook, which underscored its position a place where increasingly a lot of people pick up and share news.

Facebook has just published a list of news that is being shared with its 50 most shared stories of 2011. It is a real mix from the serious, the top most shared story was about the the Quake and Tsunami in Japan, to the ridiculous. The third most story is headlined ‘No, your zodiac sign hasn’t changed’. I don’t even know where to start with that one. Read More »

24/7 Wall St has published its list of the 25 most valuable blogs in the US. It is an interesting list with interesting price tags attached showing that blogs continue to be huge business. Combined they are worth almost $1 billion.

While the Huffington Post is no longer represented, it is so much bigger than that these days and seeems to have ascended to become a news organisation in its own right, the list shows how these well funded and increasingly well resourced sites compete with traditional media. Read More »

Amusing viral video looking at how different media outlets come up with their Occupy Wall Street headlines.

I particularly like the Huffington Post one: “what did the New York Times go with? Just repost that but in a bigger font.”

The Fox News one is also good  “Obama ruins economy, inspires shanty towns”. That’s Fox telling it like it is. Read More »

AOL is expected to surpass its quarterly earnings forecast, thanks to gains made in display advertising sales, according to analysts at financial firm UBS.

The much-maligned media company is to report revenues of $532m (£340m) this quarter, rather than the predicted $525m (£335m). The boost comes from year-over-year growth of its domestic display sales, up 21% for the quarter. Read More »

What  a mile stone. The Huffington Post has reported today that it has topped one billion page views and 37 million unique monthly users.

The 37m unique monthly users, however, puts it behind  the MailOnline, which earlier this year saw its unique visitors rise to 39,635,000. Read More »

The press Gazette has the story about the launch of the Daily Mail’s entry into comment market with a section, called RightMinds.

Love the name and the fact that it has a big picture of Richard Littlejohn on its homepage. Read More »

Other than the aggregation engine that is the Huffington Post few online only sites have managed to achieve mass market success and now Slate, one of the oldest online only magazines, has swung the axe and cut some of its most high profile staff.

Coming on the day when yet another newspaper announced it was putting up a paywall, this time the Newsquest-owned Herald in Scotland, is that another nail in the coffin of free web content? Read More »

One of the UK’s top independent blogging networks has hit out at the Huffington Post’s entry into the UK market and told bloggers not to blog for free for the AOL site which it argues does not value its bloggers despite being valued at more than £315m after its sale.

The call was made by MessageSpace which sells advertising on behalf of some of the UK’s leading political and news blogs including Guido Fawkes, LibDem Blogs, Liberal Vision, Harry’s Place, Political Scrapbook, Total Politics  and UK Polling Report. Read More »