AOL to Acquire Huffington Post

Kaching! Arianna Huffington (and her investors) are about to cash in.

AOL Inc. has just announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post. The price is roughly a third of a billion ($315 million), $300 miilion in CASH-no funny money for Arianna.

In honor of the deal, FT's blog, Apphaville, runs with a post headlined: HuffPo proves there IS (a lot of) money in blogs

AOL says that as part of the transaction, Huffington, The Huffington Post's co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

Is this a desperate move by AOL to stay relevant? Over the last six months their monthly viewership has crashed from over 60 million viewers per month to just above 50 million.

Huffington Post will maintain its stand alone web address.
 
BTW: The deal press release states:

The Huffington Post over-indexes on educated, affluent users, reaching the key decision makers in C-suites around the globe.

Do you really want to see over-indexing of the educated and affluent? Take a look at these numbers (via quantcast):
 
Huffington Post college grads: 48%
EPJ college grads: 46%
 
Huffington Post post graduate: 22%
EPJ post graduate: 33%
 
Huffington Post income 60 to 100k: 27%
EPJ income 60 to 100k: 22%
 
Huffington Post income 100k plus: 37%
EPJ income 100k plus: 50%