The Huffington Post's success model

Absrtact: The Huffington Post's rise seems sudden, but it's not. The Huffington Post in the online media has sprung up in the U.S. news industry in recent years. The site, which was created less than 6 years ago, was bought by AOL at a premium of $315 million and then became

The Huffington Post's rise seems very sudden, but it's not.

The Huffington Post in the online media has sprung up in the U.S. news industry in recent years. The site, which was created less than 6 years ago, was bought by AOL at a premium of $315 million and then became the first commercial digital media company to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Initially, The Huffington Post was just a news aggregation service and blog created by 4 of Ariana Huffington (Arianna Heffington) to express dissent, providing column reviews and different sources of news, but then began producing more and more original content. The Huffington Post topped the list of "15 top political websites" in Ebizmba rank last July. The selection is based on the Alexa global traffic rankings, as well as compete and Quantcast's US traffic rankings.

The Huffington Post's rise seems sudden, but not in fact, the site has a deep background in political journalism and leverages the power of the blogging network. And that's going to start with the founder Huffington Experience.

The founder's growth experience

Huffington was born in Athens, Greece, and his father was a journalist and management consultant. At the age of 16, Huffington went to England to study economics at Cambridge University Girton College. There, she became the first non-British president and third female president of the Cambridge Union, the university's largest student group.

In Huffington's early life, Bernard Levin, a well-known British journalist, had a big impact on her. At the time, Huffington was in love with Levin. After Levin's death, Huffington wrote: "He is not only an important lover in my life, but as a writer, he is my mentor, and as a thinker, he is my role model." ”

With Levin's help, Huffington began writing books in the 70 's. She remained in love with Levin until she was 30 years old, but they had no children. Levin didn't want to get married and have children, and Huffington realized that she had to end the relationship. She travelled to New York in 1980. In 1986, Huffington married US Republican Michael Huffington Michael Heffington and gained American citizenship in 1990.

Michael Huffington was elected to the U.S. Congressman in 1992. In the 1994, in the course of Michael Huffington's failure to run for Senator, Huffington first drew the attention of the nation. Later, Huffington stepped into American politics. She has, for example, made a clear-cut objection to NATO intervention in Serbia and, in 2003, as an independent candidate, participated in the recall of the Governor of California, where her rivals included Arnold Schwarzenegger, who subsequently ran a successful election. In 1997, Huffington divorced her husband.

The creation of the Huffington Post

Prior to the creation of the Huffington Post, Huffington had had experience with website operations, and she had created a website named ariannaonline.com in her own name. Her first foray into the internet was the creation of a website called Resignation.com, which was designed to urge U.S. President Bill Clinton to resign for a sexual harassment scandal and provide a venue for opponents of Clinton's Conservative party.

Founded on May 9, 2005, The Huffington Post was originally a platform for political commentary by liberals and leftists, and also provided the public with a news aggregation service different from the Drudge Report of the established website. In addition to Huffington, The Huffington Post's other founders also have a prominent record. For example, Andrew Breitbart, a co-founder of the site, is an American news commentator and owner of the top news aggregation service breitbart.com Andrew Brebat. Another co-founder, Kenneth Laire Kenneth Lerer, is chairman of the tech website Betaworks and BuzzFeed.

In addition to the columns of Huffington and some of the core contributors, The Huffington Post created a huge blog network of American politicians, celebrities, academics and policy experts who wrote original content on different subjects and wrote for years. The Huffington Post is a reputation built on a lot of original content. At present, The Huffington Post has an active readership group, with more than 1 million monthly comments on the site.

Development and expansion

In August 2006, more than 1 years after the site was founded, the Huffington Post won 5 million of billions of dollars in Japanese SoftBank capital. The Huffington Post was welcomed by American readers. Through this investment, The Huffington Post continues to recruit staff to achieve a 24-hour uninterrupted update. The site also started recruiting in-house correspondents and creating a multimedia team to produce video coverage.

In November 2008, The Huffington Post completed a total of $15 million trillion in funding and began dabbling in local news markets across the United States. In 2008, The Huffington Post launched its first local station, the Chicago Huffington Post. Local stations in New York, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit and Miami were launched from 2009 to 2011.

February 7, 2011, AOL announced the acquisition of the Huffington Post at a price of 315 million dollars. As part of the deal, Huffington became president of AOL's Huffington Post Media group, managing AOL's massive media business. In addition to the Huffington Post, other websites of the group include addiction Technology, TechCrunch and Mapquest.

After being acquired by AOL, The Huffington Post began its international expansion and launched its first international version of the Canadian Huffington Post on May 26, 2011. At present, The Huffington Post has been involved in the UK, France, Spain, Germany and Italy and other countries market.

As one of AOL's most important media assets, The Huffington Post relies heavily on advertising for revenue. But as a new media site, the Huffington Post's advertising revenue is harder than the traditional media. In 2010, The Huffington Post had a revenue of just over 1 dollars a year for each readership. In contrast, cable and print magazines each have a revenue of $ hundreds of per user each year, and on that basis they receive billions of dollars in advertising revenue. Of course, such comparisons are not necessarily appropriate, because the cost of running the paper and cable TV is higher than the site.

In recent years, The Huffington Post has also been exploring new sources of income, such as corporate sponsorship. In sponsoring the Huffington Post, manufacturers have largely valued Huffington's influence. For example, Cregg Burly Craig Bierley, Cadillac's global advertising director, says that as an opinion leader, Huffington is in line with marketing needs. Cadillac is currently one of the main sponsors of the Huffington Post online video network. Bialy that Huffington represents the advertising audience that the Cadillac wants to cover--wealthy, well-educated, and information-rich people. In addition to the Cadillac, The Huffington Post other sponsors include Hyatt Hotels, HBO channels and The Economist.

Successful mode

The Huffington Post's success is largely based on its blogging network. Huffington has said that many celebrities have said no to the blog, but then slowly realized the role of blogging in the promotion, and would like to open a blog on the site. These blogs subsequently have a great influence on the readers. In this sense, The Huffington Post is an online content platform that initially attracted some prominent contributors with founder Huffington's background in the American political circle, and grew rapidly after building a scale advantage.

The Huffington Post never seems to be short of quality bloggers. Many have denounced the Huffington Post for not paying bloggers, but Huffington said in 2010 that the site has many professional editors and nearly 4,000 contributors, covering many areas such as politics, entertainment, academia and nonprofit organizations. Therefore, not paying the blogger does not cause problems. In addition, The Huffington Post also provides a platform offthebus for citizen journalists to help more ordinary people publish news content.

In short, The Huffington Post does not rely on a large gathering and editing team like traditional media, but relies on the power of industry professionals to provide readers with more professional comments and opinions, thus capturing the reader's eye. In Huffington's words, The Huffington Post "provides a platform for a truly important national dialogue of the United States."

The Huffington Post was profitable as early as 2010, when its annual profit was $35 million trillion. In 2011, the Huffington Post exceeded 25 million per month of independent user visits, surpassing the New York Times website. In the past two years, The Huffington Post has increased its monthly independent user visits to 45 million, compared with an average monthly growth rate of 22% in the second half of 2012, according to comscore. AOL offers a number of links to the Huffington Post on its home page, which brings huge traffic to the site.

The Huffington Post's success comes from the ingenious use of the media form of blogging to make the most of free and professional resources. However, many of these resources are exclusive, which means that there is no possibility of multiple Huffington Post in the market.

In the Chinese internet market, blogs have now grown to the media age. Based on the experience of the Huffington Post, the key to future development is how to skillfully attract professionals to write high-quality original content and produce scale effects on media sites. However, in terms of Internet media regulation, the difference between China and the United States is clear, which means it is not possible to copy the Huffington Post model from media sites.