Voices

Huffington’s Role Shrinks at AOL

Arianna Huffington acknowledged Thursday that her portfolio at AOL Inc. is being scaled back to include only the Huffington Post, undoing a structure put in place when her Web site was acquired by AOL last year.

Big Win for New Old Media

While it’s tempting to see the Huffington Post’s Pulitzer as a “big win for new media,” or something like that, the real story is that these organizations — the Huffington Post, the New York Times, the Washington Post — are becoming more like each other. Old media and new media are increasingly antiquated terms.

– Journalism professor Jay Rosen to HuffPo media writer Michael Calderone (via GigaOM)

Spotify Moves Beyond Facebook With a “Play Button” for the Rest of the Web

Last fall, Spotify grafted itself onto Facebook and rounded up several million new users. Now it’s trying to do the same thing with every other site.
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Two Years and $33 Million Later, Start-Up Investor Lerer Ventures Starts Building Its Own Companies

Like lots of other investors, Ken Lerer, Ben Lerer and Eric Hippeau are plowing money into start-ups. Unlike some of the other guys, they’re making some of them themselves.
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News Byte

Tablet Reading Apps Zite, Pulse Strike Publisher Deals

More tablet experimentation from publishers, this time via reading apps Pulse and Zite. Pulse, which already offered readers excerpts from Bonnier’s Popular Science magazine, will now be doing that with 20 other Bonnier titles. And Zite will be bringing content from eight publishers — including VentureBeat, CNN and AOL’s Huffington Post — to its apps.

Blogging for Free

Quite simply, the plaintiffs offered a service and the defendants offered exposure in return, and the transaction occurred exactly as advertised. The defendants followed through on their end of the agreed-upon bargain. That the defendants ultimately profited more than the plaintiffs might have expected does not give the plaintiffs a right to change retroactively their clear, up-front agreement.

– U.S. District Judge John Koeltl, in his decision against the unpaid bloggers who sued the Huffington Post for retroactive payment despite the fact that their original agreement was to write for free

Unpaid Huffington Post Bloggers Remain Unpaid

AOL and Arianna Huffington can breathe easy. About this ridiculous class action suit, at least.
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Voices

If You Think “Social” Means Viral, You’ve Got It All Wrong

There are different ideas of what “social” can mean on the Web, and not everyone knows where the gold lies. (Hint: You won’t find it with the South Park underpants gnome plan.)

HuffPo Co-Founder Ken Lerer’s Stealthy Start-Up Aims at CNN, Fox

Ken Lerer helped build an Internet news powerhouse out of thin air. Now he wants to do it again — this time using video.
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News Byte

AOL Joins Rush Limbaugh Ad Exodus

AOL became the eighth advertiser to pull its ads from Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show, after the conservative host referred to a Georgetown law school student as a “slut” and a “prostitute.” An AOL spokeswoman told AOL’s Huffington Post that the company was “suspend[ing] advertising” because “Mr. Limbaugh’s comments are not in line with our values.”