Comments on: HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau: ‘We Are Now In The Big Leagues’

By: Patrick Mersinger

Patrick Mersinger — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:20:25 +0000

Yes, but which one is making money and which is still trying to raise cash. Not bad for a website that just takes others content.

By: TrashoutPro

TrashoutPro — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:49:35 +0000

We are very happy that HuffingtonPost is doing well. Our website used articles from HF for our foreclosure news section, but now when our system tries to copy and paste the headlines, it also gets alot of extra not needed info along with the headline. This also happens when you do it manually. We had to stop using news feeds from HF. See if you can fix this.

By: Bettina Kozlowski

Bettina Kozlowski — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:35:58 +0000

I agree with Henry 100%. HuffPost's stellar numbers may be due to the fact that it's steadily morphing into a National Enquirer -type outlet, with its overload of "screaming headlines" that have little to do with the original mission of the site. Celebrity bloggers get top billing over experts qualified to analyze an issue and entertainment news now competes with political issues. . And to add insult to injury, HP rips off content for free everywhere, thereby shortchanging the original publications, and, sigh, journalists. I wish all original sources charged HP a fee for reproducing their material and I sure wish HP had the decency to pay its contributors and please, pretty please edit out some of the 1,000,000 blogs, such as those from new age life coaches.

By: steve

steve — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:14:00 +0000

yes, but when it does have clothes it whips the pants off most other online "news" outlets in speed and presentation.

By: Henry Copeland

Henry Copeland — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:35:16 +0000

Lots of good stuff in there Stacy, though I'm not sure WSJ, LAT and NYC are fair benchmarks when Hippeau places Huffpo "in the big leagues."

Check out Huffpo's "most popular" leaderboard. On a recent day, posts 2, 3 and 4 were “Shauna Sand’s SEX TAPE: Lorenzo Lamas’ Ex’s Explicit VIDEO ONLINE” and “The 10 Creepiest Unintentionally-Sexual Ads Of All Time (VIDEO PHOTOS)” and “January Jones Drinks Beer, Dons Leather, Says Ex-Boyfriend Ashton Thought She’d Fail.”

Maybe PerezHilton or TMZ are a better points of reference in talking about Huffpo's explosive traffic growth?

Last summer Huffpo was including page view data for their "most popular" list, but that disappeared. A "cover up" for the nudity? No doubt the "most popular" list will soon become simply "recommended." (Assuming there's truth in labeling.)

More data here: http://weblog.blogads.com/2009/08/25/huffpo-hides-its-skin-fixation/

When it comes to Huffpo, the Empress's content often has no clothes. :)

By: Staci D. Kramer

Staci D. Kramer — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:46:43 +0000

@Chris point made but he's referring to overall traffic there. WSJ also counts on reaching "free" readers for advertising — that's why traffic is many multiples of the paid online paid circ.

By: Chris Flynn

Chris Flynn — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:43:33 +0000

Interesting statement "“It wasn’t so much the Washington Post—by the way, it’s also the LA Times, it’s also the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. ".

Funny, 'free content' media versus the online (paid) edition of The Wall Street Journal. For my money and quality of content, I'll take The Wall Street Journal. I am not certain, but I would guess the subscription revenue of the WSJ online is about 10x that of all revenue at "HuffPo". I wonder who has the stronger, more credible brand and will survive in the long term?