AOL closes Huffington Post deal; its stock hits all-time low

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: Los Angeles Times

AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post closed Monday, and the same day, AOL's stock sank to its lowest price ever.

As noted by Business Insider's Chart of the Day, shares of AOL fell about 4%, or 79 cents, to $19.26 -- its lowest closing price so far. That was down about one-third from the one-year high it reached in April, Business Insider noted.

The decline in stock price may show a lack of investor confidence in Chief Executive Tim Armstrong's attempt to turn AOL around. Much of that plan is pinned on the combined vision of Armstong and Arianna Huffington, who is becoming president and editor in chief of a new Huffington Post Media Group inside AOL.

AOL, looking to capitalize on the success of the Huffington Post website and brand, is putting the majority of its online publishing properties under Huffington's control.

Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/03/aol-stock-huffington-post.html

[Sonicwall]

1. Why hasn't AOL died a horrible painful death YET?

They should have died after the Time Warner disaster.

Curse you, Steve Case!

[physioex]

2. OMG....What is it about AOL that hasn't always been dorky.

From the early days of crappy internet service with a crappy interface. To the purchase of CNN, to the Huffington Post. A brain dead moran is definitely at the helm of this company.

[creeksneakers2]

4. It has a seediness that can't be found with any other ISP

[Old and In the Way]

6. For a lot of us non-geeks, AOL was our 1st venture on line.

Way back in the old days of the early 90's, there were few ISP's, well developed browsers, or content to browse. AOL was a pretty slick service that had all 3 going in a 3-1/2 floppy. They were my 1st e-mail service. You log on and the hear the "you got mail" announcement - way cool! Then you'd check it and it's another sales pitch for some product. Bummer. After a couple of years, I got that open browser Mosaic and got an account with a local ISP dial-up. That was it for me. Never looked back.

[boppers]

12. You get decent geek cred for adopting Mosaic.

It's still around, BTW.... it's been rewritten from the ground up a few times, but the lineage goes like this:
Mosaic->Netscape Navigator->Firefox

In the case of AOL, it wasn't so much that there was a dearth of ISP's in the early 90's, the thing was a lack of marketing. Nobody had figured out how to make the internet a "product". Thus, most of the offerings back then had "internet access" in some way, but their "product" was usually based on a Bulletin Board model: downloadable content hosted by the company you were buying access to. The internet link was really a second thought....

...until everybody started putting their content up *for free*, and the edge that AOL (and other walled content providers had) was smashed.

[Old and In the Way]

21. Up in my neck of the woods (central Maine), I assure you there were

few, as in no, local access numbers or dial-up ISPs to enter the innertubes. Now that I think of it, that actually was a big selling point to signing up to AOL. LD charges were not an issue because AOL had local access numbers to use.

[raebrek]

19. You'd log into AOL

and then you would watch for 10 minutes while it updated its graphics on your nickles. They did eventually change that but to start out with it was a big pain in the but.

Raebrek!!!

[Anakin Skywalker]

22. More alarming is the majority of its news readers are stupid rightwingers. Read the "comments"

sections of their news articles and you'll see.

[snooper2]

7. Well, they are still paying their bills

:P

You don't think they actually own/have their own network right :)

They are trying to be a content provider. Except, all their content sucks :rofl:

[davidpdx]

13. When I heard about AOL buying The HuffingtonFoxPost

I pretty much said that it was going to be a disaster. Of course anything involving AOL pretty much is.

[Ramulux]

3. I hope AOL takes the Huffpost down with it

Maybe that will teach Arriana a lesson about greed.

[Tansy_Gold]

5. She's got her money. SHE DOESN'T CARE.

More than likely, she never did.



TG

[davidpdx]

14. She's a money grubbing Republican

What do you expect? It's too bad some people on here are duped into believing they are a legitimate news source.

[Historic NY]

8. Its free.

[notesdev]

9. Stock market valuation of HuffPo: zero

AOL's market cap dropped by the amount they paid for HuffPo the day the deal was announced.

[davidpdx]

15. They could change their name to AOL0

Fitting it's it?

Either that or

Assholes
Offending
Litter

[boppers]

10. I like the first four words of the headline....

"AOL closes Huffington Post"

...but then I saw there was more.

[davidpdx]

16. The next four words should have been....

AOL takes a dive again...

[Electric Monk]

11. Arianna won that one. Bigtime.

[Liberal Veteran]

17. Doesn't AOL stand for Acquisition of Lame?

:shrug:

[bemildred]

18. What a coincidence! nt

[Stuart G]

20. kick