The Huffington Post has raised 25 million
dollars in funding from Oak Investment
Partners, claims ATD.
According to ATD, this puts the valuation for The Huffington Post at 100 million dollar.
It’s a big valuation, and the 25 million dollar round is bigger than the previously rumored
15 million. A question that inevitably still pops up after any news such as this is:
“how does this make sense? It’s just a blog!” I, however, don’t
see why not.
I’ve checked out Huffington Post - which I
rarely normally do as I’m not interested in politics - and I don’t see any crucial
differences between this site, and any big media publication on the web. They’ve got news,
reports, features, they seem to be timely and thorough, and they produce a lot of content. On the
internet, that’s pretty much all that matters: whether you’ve got a team of 100
people behind the site or it’s just a one man gig, all your readers care about is the
content.
The only difference between a blog and any other media publication is that blogs scale very well.
Traditionally, if you want to start a newspaper, you need editors, journalists, graphic
designers, you need money for print, you need marketing, and a zillion other things just
to start off. And it all costs a lot of money.
On a blog, starting out is not only cheap: it’s free. You just start
writing. If you’re good, then you get audience, and you can add all those things mentioned
above as you go along. However, this doesn’t at all mean that a blog cannot be bigger than
the New York Times: there’s absolutely no reason why it couldn’t. And one day,
it’ll happen. In fact, blogs usually understand the new media better than old giants.
Valuating The Huffington Post at $100 million may be brave, but it’s definitely not insane;
we’ll see if this particular bet pays off.
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and reject those that you are not interested in
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