But Wall Street will quickly scrutinize the breakdown of CEO Tim Armstrong’s sales performance. Last quarter, the company posted a 5 percent ad bump, but investors hated the details: Much of the growth was coming from the company’s low-margin network business, in addition to gains from its HuffPo and TechCrunch acquisitions.

What Wall Street really wants to see (or at least what it wanted to see last quarter) is organic growth in the company’s core display business, and improving earnings.

Overall, AOL’s ad sales are up 8 percent, and display is 15 percent. Investors might raise an eyebrow over the fact that domestic display growth of 14 percent is a sequential decline from last quarter’s 16 percent rise, though. And bear in mind that these numbers include both TechCrunch and Huffington Post boosts. Also worrisome — a mere 1 percent increase in the company’s owned and operated properties — again, that’s after accounting for those two big acquisitions. (Click image to enlarge.)

Another flag for AOL: Even though it has added TechCrunch and the Huffington Post over the last year, traffic to AOL’s own sites has barely budged: A year ago, AOL attracted 106 million monthly unique visitors to its sites; this year, the total only moved up to 107 million.

AOL earnings call starts at 8 am ET, and beyond this morning’s release, investors will also want to hear what Armstrong is seeing in the ad market in general. Until recently, digital ads have been booming for just about everyone except for AOL and Yahoo, but recently we’ve heard about softness/slower growth making its way to the Web, too. (Though no sign of that from Google.)

And, of course, Wall Street will also want to see if Armstrong has anything to say about eternal speculation that he wants to link up with Yahoo itself.

But instead of moving movies and TV shows to the world’s biggest Web site, they’re trying something different: Google is handing out more than $100 million to dozens of partners to create new “channels.”

The idea is to make “professional” content that advertisers will pay a premium to be near, instead of the grab bag of videos that dominate the site and that often sell at very low prices.

This isn’t news, of course: YouTube reps have been holding meetings and auditions for most of the year, led by former Netflix executive Robert Kyncl. And we’ve known about the deal terms, and many of the partners, for some time.

But now the site is finally talking about them publicly and promising that it will start unveiling some of the new programming next month. Some of the channels — each of which will have a couple hours of original programming per week — will feature people you’ve heard of, like Madonna, Jay-Z,  Ashton Kutcher and “Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara.

But the channels aren’t all premised around the idea of celebrities and Hollywood per se — just the idea that someone with some idea of how to make good stuff will start making stuff specifically for the site.

For instance, BedRocket Properties, the video start-up backed by the Huffington Post’s Ken Lerer and run by cable TV veteran Brian Bedol, will do four channels, including a soccer-themed channel in conjunction with Major League Soccer, and an action sports channel produced along with Wasserman Media Group.

Another example: IGN, the videogame Web site being spun off by News Corp., will produce a game-themed channel along with the Shine Group, the TV production house recently purchased by News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

It’s worth noting that some of the channels will be run by people who are well-versed in creating Web video — and video for YouTube in particular. Machinima, for instance, which also specializes in game-themed stuff, is already one of YouTube’s most prolific partners, and essentially runs a network within YouTube’s network.

Maker Studios, which is producing three channels, is another outfit that already specializes in YouTube. And Demand Media went public this year, in part because it had figured out the art of cranking out Web videos very, very, quickly, at very, very low prices.

YouTube may not be releasing all of the channels and partners today, perhaps because it doesn’t actually have all of its deals signed yet. And at least one partner told me that some of the mechanics of the deals, like control of ad sales, had yet to be worked out.

That’s hard to imagine, given the amount of time that YouTube has been at this. But it’s also hard to imagine why you’d announce a big consumer-focused deal at the end of a Friday. So, who knows.

We do know the general outlines of the deals, though: Google will advance most of the creators up to $5 million, and in return will get commitments to produce a couple hours of programming a week for the channel. Once the programmers have earned back their advance from YouTube, they’ll split ad revenue with the site. The programming will be exclusive to YouTube for at least the first year of the three-year deals.

What we don’t know is how this stuff will actually work: $5 million won’t go very far if the partners use traditional TV and film budgets, so many of the partners are going to have to supplement that money with investments of their own — and they’re going to have to work on a tighter budget. And just because there’s a bit of Hollywood shine associated with this stuff doesn’t mean that people will actually watch — or, most crucially, that advertisers will pay up.

Google may also try other methods to get high-end video stuff. The company made a stab at Hulu when that video site was on the block. And it has indicated that it’s interested in licensing some content in international markets, where it thinks it can get more bang for its buck.

This is one of the funnier takes on Occupy Wall Street, looking at how various news organizations come up with headlines about the movement.

Funniest? The Huffington Post.

Enjoy:

This did not make it onto “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, but it is still very funny — a mock interview by Charlie Rose of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, Reed Hastings of Netflix and the world’s oldest “mean girl,” Rupert Murdoch of News Corp., all talking about Apple’s Steve Jobs.

Heh:

Where before, Facebook users had to use their computers for most of their Facebook gaming and app needs, now they should be able to play and participate from almost any device with a Web browser. And they may get a better experience if it happens to be an Apple iOS device.

In fact, though this launch had been described as an affront to Apple, it’s really not — whenever possible, the new Facebook mobile versions will defer to Apple’s native platform and even its payments system.

A big reason why Facebook apps, especially games, didn’t work on phones was because iOS devices don’t support Flash. Facebook has helped a select set of developers — Audiovroom, Branchout, EA, Flixster, Gilt Groupe, Huffington Post, Moblyng, Storm8, Wooga and Zynga — create HTML5 versions of a selection of their apps and game titles that will work in mobile Web browsers.

But HTML5 still doesn’t offer the performance that many complex apps require, so if the developers have created native versions of their apps, they can also connect Facebook users directly to that native app.

So now, when a friend sends you an invitation to play Words With Friends and you view it on the Facebook app on your iPhone, you can click to play and be taken to the Words With Friends app. If you don’t have the app, you’ll be directed to Apple’s App Store. If you’re on an Android phone, you’ll be taken to an HTML5 version in your mobile Web browser.

The combined native and Web app experience is only available on iOS for now. On Android and other phones with Web browsers, users will default to the Web experience. Facebook CTO Bret Taylor told AllThingsD today that Facebook is also working on an update to its native Android application.

While many people will appreciate having a more consistent Facebook app experience, the byproduct of this launch is that it could be much easier for users to find new mobile apps through their friends. Mobile app discovery has been a huge challenge for developers, and social could help unlock that problem by showing people what apps their friends are using.

“We really hope that we can fill a gap in app discovery here,” Taylor said.

On the downside, there’s one place Facebook wasn’t able to negotiate a consistent experience for users: payments. This was a major sticking point in ongoing discussions with Apple, as I’d written last week.

Facebook Credits can’t be used to pay for virtual goods within native iOS apps or mobile Web apps running within a Facebook app on iOS. Instead, users will have to buy separate in-app currency through Apple’s own in-app payment system.

And this after Facebook just required all of its game developers to switch to exclusive use of Credits earlier this year.

“We realize there’s some inconsistency,” Taylor admitted. He wouldn’t say if Facebook gets a share of revenue for in-app purchases it refers to Apple.

As for the Facebook iPad app, it has been close to being released for over a year, according to people who have seen it and worked on it — though the app has changed in scope throughout. Today at 1 pm PT it will finally be available as part of a universal iOS update.

Along with the ability to use Facebook platform apps, the iPad version will feature “an immersive and full-screen photos experience,” plus new and speedy chat and messages interfaces, Taylor said.

All this is being released three weeks after Facebook held its major developer conference, a week after Apple unveiled its new iOS, and just a few days after iconic Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died.

So why now for the mobile platform? “Honestly — because it’s done now,” Taylor said.

“The reason these [launches] are connected is about ease of use, which is particularly acute on something like a tablet,” he added. “We wanted our native apps to be as feature-complete as possible.”

Okay, but the new mobile versions — despite their focus on app discovery — don’t include Facebook’s new live Ticker, which is one of the main ways users can see their friends are engaging with various apps.

That’s true, but probably won’t be for long, Taylor said, attributing the lag time between Web and mobile features to the challenge of designing user interfaces on small screens.

As for Facebook’s relationship with Apple? “We have a good relationship with Apple and we’ve worked with them on all our iOS releases,” Taylor said.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

According to sources, AOL’s head of Europe Kate Burns has left the company and has been replaced by Goviral chairman and co-founder Jimmy Maymann.

Goviral is a unit of AOL’s Advertising.com and has been a bright spot in its ad business. Goviral’s CEO René Rechtman will now serve as the new head of the European Advertising.com Group.

Burns, who is SVP of sales and operations for AOL Europe, does not seem to have immediate plans and will stay at the company until the end of October.

Maymann reports to Ned Brody, who was recently named AOL’s sales head and Chief Revenue Officer.

According to an internal memo, he will head the Huffington Post owned-and-operated businesses for both Europe and Latin America. The Huffington Post unit has taken over all of AOL’s content businesses.

In related news, Peter Kafka reported earlier today that AOL’s music head had left the New York-based company for a start-up.

The change in Europe happened last week, the second international shift at a big U.S. Internet concern. Yesterday, I reported that Yahoo’s Latin America head left the company.

In fact, here is the memo from Brody, if you want go to town:

From: “Brody, Ned”
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:40:03 -0400
To: AOL_Advertising, B2B, FriendsofAdvertising, B2B_Partners
Cc: AOLExecTeam
Subject: Organizational Update

Team,

As you know, one of our focus areas has been to re-emerge as a dynamic player outside of North America. As a part of this plan, we made the strategic decision two weeks ago to focus these sales and marketing efforts on our core global businesses: the Advertising.com Group and The Huffington Post. I’m excited about the plans we have to move these businesses forward.

To best support these changes, we’ve formalized an operational structure that we believe will set us on the path for even greater global growth. I’m excited to announce that René Rechtman will serve as the new head of the European Advertising.com Group business and Jimmy Maymann will lead the Huffington Post O&O business for Europe and Latin America. René and Jimmy will report directly to me.

René will lead our strategy of partnering with publishers and advertisers across Europe. We believe that his proven leadership and expanded focus on our publisher and advertising businesses will allow us to scale quickly. Advertising.com and goviral operate in over 10 countries in Europe and we have an opportunity to fulfill our mission of building the strength of quality publishers and the strength of Europe’s best brands.

To help meet the outpouring of demand in many countries for our brand and content, we will be moving our global content platforms back into Europe — having started with the UK — and opening opportunities in Latin America. Jimmy will lead our European and Latin America operations, pushing our content expansion opportunities. He is one of the most talented entrepreneurs in our organization and the right person to lead this forward.

Our strong leadership team will continue to support the execution of our strategy. Nimeshh Patel will continue his role as head of European operations and will report directly into Artie Minson. Sarah Gavin will continue to lead marketing and communications, reporting into Maureen Sullivan. Noel Penzer will now serve as VP, Europe and Latin America, reporting into Jimmy. Luke Aviet will take on a wider European remit in the Advertising.com group, focusing on internationalization and expansion, and will continue to report into René.

It’s important to note that our current progress could not have been achieved without tremendous leadership. At this point in our company’s development, Kate Burns has made a personal decision to leave AOL to spend more time with her family and personal pursuits. Two years ago, Kate came on board as the SVP of European Sales and CEO of the European operation to help turn the business around. In that short time, she has successfully refocused our efforts, established a strong leadership team and scaled the new business operational structure.

She and the team have done this well ahead of schedule and I’m particularly proud of this progress. Kate will remain on board until the end of October in an advisory capacity and to help with the transition. Please join me in wishing Kate well in her future endeavors.

We told the world AOL would return to the global stage and that’s exactly what we did and what we’re doing. We have a number of exciting launches in the works in the coming months as well as executing on our daily commitment to our consumers, advertisers and teams. I ask that you continue to stay focused on our goals and most important, celebrate the amazing accomplishments of our collective teams in advancing our global strategy.

Best,

Ned

What does this all mean? Lots and lots more sharing, and probably a good amount of oversharing, that’s what.

It’s infinitely easier to consume something than to make an active decision to share it with other people. Facebook’s new real-time “ticker” stream of everything users read, watch and listen to (and also tag, friend and like) could turn every act of online consumption into something that’s now shared with friends.

Now Facebook users won’t necessarily have to endorse or recommend something by liking it, or exert themselves to come up with a witty comment. They can just keep reading, watching and listening as they always have.

Or they can head over to Facebook, see what their friends are doing at that moment, and join right in.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been positing since at least 2008 that every year Internet users share twice as much information as the year before.

He’s about to give this so-called “Zuckerberg’s Law” a big push.

It’s not hard to imagine Facebook sharing more than doubling after the f8 launches. Millions of tiny little actions are going to move from implicit to explicit. You can start to see why Facebook enabled its “ticker” news feed earlier this week (that’s the dizzying real-time stream that many users have been complaining about). There’s going to be a ton of information flying by.

Of course, many people no longer trust Facebook and its endless revisions and privacy incursions. It seems inevitable that people will feel exposed and exploited when everything they read, watch or listen to is shared.

So we’ll all be watching to see how Facebook and its partners control the privacy settings on this one. At the very least, there needs to be a very prominent and easy-to-use incognito mode.

But at the same time, what Facebook is doing isn’t new — it’s just turbocharging passive sharing with its social network. For instance, Last.fm, which “scrobbles” and shares users’ music listening item by item, was founded in 2002.

Later, in 2009, the Huffington Post built one of the most involved Facebook Connect implementations to date, in which participating users share every single article they read on the news site through Facebook. This functionality is basically what Facebook is going to be enabling and pushing to a mass of content sites now.

(In fact, Facebook had already built a version of this real-time automated sharing tool for “canvas” apps that run within Facebook, having launched a “games ticker” in August.)

Another thing to look for Thursday is how Facebook handles the contextualization of this flooding stream, since Web users consume mountains of content these days. Every once in a while I look at my own browser history and I’m shocked at how many pages I visited in the span of a few minutes.

According to sources, Facebook has built some interesting new interfaces around chronological views, consumption histories and item grouping.

We’ll make sure to look for that, and we’ll also be listening for whether Facebook addresses how advertisers and sponsored stories fit into the ticker.

On that note, team AllThingsD will be at f8 Thursday (tune in at 10 am PT here and/or to the Facebook live video stream) and will provide coverage and analysis throughout the day to overshare our content, too.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Related posts

• The Big Picture of Facebook f8: Prepare for the Oversharing Explosion
• Facebook’s f8 2011: This Is Your Life
• Big Media Hands Over Its Locks and Keys to Facebook
• What Facebook Has Announced So Far: The Timeline — And Verbs
• Get Ready, Facebook Apps Will Ask for Your Permission Only Once
• Facebook Gets in the App Discovery Game with “Graph Rank”
• Live: Facebook Answers Some Questions About its New Social Order

Here’s another interesting wrinkle to the ongoing saga of AOL, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and his nascent venture firm, CrunchFund.

Since the controversy erupted last week, Arrington has reached out to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, as well as others in Silicon Valley, about buying back his popular tech news site.

Sources said Arrington needs funding to do so — irony alert! — and told them over the weekend that he planned to use his blogging bully pulpit to force AOL into giving up the site it bought for more than $25 million almost exactly a year ago.

But sources said — at this point — AOL is not inclined to sell the site, which has prompted Arrington to pen a blog post on TechCrunch, not-meant-as-a-joke-titled “Editorial Independence,” suggesting they do so.

Quelle surprise!

We’ve proposed two options to Aol.

1. Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition. Given the current circumstances, that means autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination. To put it simply, TechCrunch would stay with Aol but would be independent of the Huffington Post.

or

2. Sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.

Arrington used an image of the Spartans from, I think, the movie “300,” on the post. Memo to Mike: All the Spartans died in the end, however valiant. It goes without saying — this situation is not valiant and you are definitely not King Leonidas.

“It is at a stalemate, so this is the result,” said one person with knowledge of the pugnacious effort by Arrington to take back his baby.

Which, of course, he sold in the first place.

AOL has stated it will not allow Arrington to remain its editor or have “influence on coverage” while also doing a venture fund.

Thus, some of Arrington’s staffers, such as M.G. Siegler, have already been plowing the ground ahead of Arrington’s post.

Siegler, for example, penned a weepy diatribe about how unfair it all is and how different the site operates from slow-footed meanies at big media organizations such as the New York Times. The Times strafed Arrington in a David Carr column yesterday.

Wrote Siegler, in what can only be described as soap-opera fantastic: “TechCrunch is on the precipice. As soon as tomorrow, Mike may be thrown out of the company he founded. Or he may not. No one knows.”

Tune in tomorrow to see if AOL’s content chief and Arrington boss Arianna Huffington will use that gun in her pocket. Or will she use the razor-chiseled cheekbones of Armstrong to slice her new nemesis?

(Alls I can say to add to what I have already said, at this point: Good lord. But, wait, isn’t there a TechCrunch Disrupt conference next week to hawk and make it all about Arrington and not the entrepreneurs? This explains everything!)

While Siegler is trying to make it all sound as if it is so very unfair, since the site is presumably so very special, AllThingsD operates in a similar quick-edit way to TechCrunch — where I will underscore there are some terrific journalists.

But — because it is simply flat-out wrong on every possible scale — neither Walt Mossberg nor I would ever consider being editors of the site while also running a venture fund.

(In fact, it is now a standing rule at ATD that, if we ever did such an unthinkable thing — which of course we never would — our writers tell us we stink rather than praise us.)

Meanwhile, we’ll be busy breaking some actual tech news on this site, like here and here and here, while TechCrunch presumably faux-burns and AOL fiddles.

According to sources close to the situation, longtime Yahoo front page chief Liz Lufkin has parted ways with the company.

The departure last week appears to be related to a reorg by newish editor-in-chief Jai Singh, who used to run the editorial efforts for the Huffington Post, at the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Singh appears to be setting up his own team and, thus, Lufkin was out.

Lufkin has been at Yahoo for many years, most recently as VP of front page programming. In that job, according to one bio, she supervised “editors in Sunnyvale, Santa Monica, New York and Dallas and consult[ed] to various international Yahoo! sites. Liz’s group contributed to the successful development of Yahoo’s pioneering content optimization personalization system, improving the relevancy of Front Page for users and providing new insights on audience behavior.”

Previous to Yahoo, she had been deputy managing editor at Gannett’s USATODAY.com and USA Today. She had a similar job at the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle.

Lufkin’s job at Yahoo is a critical one, given how powerful the front page of the site is, with 600 million unique visitors and billions of page views.

While the portal system has been under siege in recent years, it is still a massive driver of traffic to Yahoo’s own Web properties and elsewhere on the Internet.

Yahoo declined to comment (but I am right!).

UPDATE: Yahoo said that it had hired CNET editor-in-chief Scott Ard to take Lufkin’s place. Ard, who worked for the CBS-owned tech news property for 12 years, will report directly to Jai Singh, editor-in-chief of the Yahoo Media Network.

In the last month, the stock of AOL has declined just over 50 percent.

But that drop is not just due to the turbulent markets of late. AOL stock had a 50 percent drop over the last six months, a 57 percent decline since the beginning of the year, and a 56 percent plunge since it went public in late 2009.

Which is why some in the industry — at private equity firms and bigger companies — have noted to me that the price of AOL might have gotten low enough for a very cheap takeover.

“You have to look, even with all the problems they have been struggling to fix,” said one person, who also underscored the advertising and other challenges that AOL faces. “But it is so inexpensive, it’s also an interesting idea.”

Said another large investor: “It’s almost free, given its cash on hand.”

Indeed, since in its recent second-quarter earnings report, AOL said that, as of June 30, it has $458.7 million in cash.

That matters, since at $10.22 a share — a far cry from its $28.45 high of all time in late April of 2010 — the market valuation of the New York-based Internet giant is only $1.09 billion.

You do the math.

To give that number perspective, AOL paid out $315 million in cash to buy the Huffington Post in the beginning of this year. And, let us not forget, under different management, AOL forked over $850 million in cash to buy the Bebo social network in 2008, and sold it for a song last year.

Even AOL thinks the price is low, announcing a $250 million stock buyback program this morning, just as shares hit their lowest point ever yesterday.

The stock is up today, though still in the basement.

To be fair, comparable companies’ valuations have also taken a hit recently. Yahoo shares are down 29 percent since the beginning of the year, giving it an affordable $15.3 billion valuation; and Demand Media’s stock has dropped 63 percent in that period, making its current price tag only $703 million.

Calling all shoppers?

Wall Street says otherwise: AOL shares are off more than 20 percent on a day when the market is perking up, just a tiny bit – the Nasdaq is currently up 1.64 percent.

What gives? AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told analysts today that he wasn’t happy with some of the company’s results. But earlier this morning, when I told him that investors were dumping the stock, he told me a sell-off against the broad market uptick would be “hard to comprehend.”

So here’s an explainer, via Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney. The analyst didn’t lower his “hold” rating on AOL after this morning’s earnings, but he didn’t see enough to make him happy, either. We’ll use him, via the note he published today, as a rough proxy for disaffected AOL investors:

• Revenue was more than Wall Street expected, but the bonus dollars came from AOL’s less profitable network business, not its core display business.
• Meanwhile, that display business actually got weaker this quarter: If you pretend that AOL owned TechCrunch and HuffingtonPost a year ago (i.e. “pro forma results”), then display ad sales would have increased 9 percent this quarter, down from 12 percent in Q1.
• Those display dollars may have been at risk even before we were facing Maybe Recession 2.0, or whatever we’re going to call it: The company “noted significant weakness in June & July.”
• Earnings are shrinking: “EBITDA declined over 60%+ Y/Y vs. downapprox 57% Y/Y in Q1; this marks one of the biggest declines we’ve seen in years.”
• And earnings will continue to shrink in the near-term: The company lowered its EBITDA guidance for the rest of the year.

The British version of the Huffington Post, which has been expected, went live today.

It is the site’s first major international expansion beyond North America (Canada was first).

While the content is aimed at the audience there, it will still have the usual HuffPo mix of saucy news, videos and blogs.

But in this case, instead of U.S. celebs and pols, those blogs will come from famous British luminaries, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair; Sarah Brown, wife of another former PM, Gordon Brown; and entertainers Ricky Gervais and Tracey Ullman.

The Huffington Post apparently already attracts a monthly audience in excess of 1.2 million in the U.K.

AOL — which bought the high-profile news and opinion site for $315 million — has given its content head, Arianna Huffington, a lot of backing and also funding for expansion, including globally.

Other international Huffington Post sites are likely to roll out soon.

Here’s the official press release:

BRITAIN WAKES UP TO THE HUFFINGTON POST UK TODAY

Latest Edition of “HuffPost” Blends Brand’s Unique Mix of News, Opinion, Community, and Engagement with Original, UK-centric Content

6th July, 2011, London – The Huffington Post UK (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/), a UK version of The Huffington Post (“HuffPost”), the popular American news and opinion site, goes live today. The site features HuffPost’s unique combination of original reporting, aggregation, a leading-edge commenting forum, pioneering social engagement tools, and a vibrant platform for a wide range of bloggers. High profile bloggers already lined up to contribute through the site include Tony Blair, Jeremy Hunt and Sarah Brown as well as comedy and entertainment luminaries such as Ricky Gervais, Tracey Ullman, Imogen Edwards-Jones, Jonathan Meades and Kate Garraway .

The Huffington Post UK is edited by Carla Buzasi (nee Bevan), Editor-in-Chief, AOL Europe who leads an initial team of ten dedicated editors and writers, with further support from the wider AOL editorial team in the UK, as well as The Huffington Post team in the United States. The Huffington Post UK platform gives hundreds of British bloggers the opportunity to showcase their work to millions of readers globally.

Other recent new hires include Political Editor Chris Wimpress, a former political correspondent for BBC Radio 4; News Editor Jacqui Head, formerly an Online Journalist at Al-Jazeera, with stints at BBC and CNN; and Caroline Frost, Entertainment Editor, previously an Arts Producer for BBC News, and Online Entertainment Editor at the Herald Sun in Melbourne. Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Chief Executive Officer of E.L. Rothschild and board member of Estee Lauder and The Economist Group, is the site’s Editor-at-Large.

The Huffington Post (US) was founded in May 2005, and has become an influential and oft-quoted media brand, “The Internet Newspaper.” It attracts 36 million* readers and only last month overtook the New York Times to become the world’s biggest newspaper online.

The UK site offers coverage of politics, entertainment, living, style, world news, technology, comedy, and is a top destination for news, blogs and original content. In the coming months, The Huffington Post UK will evolve to feature even more content across a whole range of genres.

Commenting on the launch of the UK site, Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group, said: “We are arriving here in the midst of a rich and thriving media culture marked by great innovation. We look forward to adding HuffPost UK to the mix, and to our real-time ‘digital water cooler’ — which embraces the best of the new (immediacy, transparency, interactivity) and the best of the old (fact-checking, accuracy, fairness, and an emphasis on storytelling) — becoming the spark for many interesting conversations.”

Kate Burns, SVP, AOL Europe, said: “The Huffington Post has pioneered a new way for people to connect with the news of the day, and with each other, so we’re excited to bring this unique platform to the UK. We’re giving people the chance to write, share and debate opinions, creating a democratic site that can give Joe Bloggs the same platform as Ricky Gervais.”

The Huffington Post (US) already attracts a monthly audience in excess of 1.2 million [comScore, May 2011] UK based readers who are engaged, influential, and affluent. The UK site will feature premium ad formats, including the recently launched “Project Devil,” which has generated unprecedented engagement levels, time spent on ads and time spent viewing ad videos. At launch The Huffington Post UK will showcase an LG Project Devil campaign brokered through leading media agency Mindshare and a Dell PLE campaign negotiated by Mediacom.

Talking to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong earlier this week about its investors day tomorrow, he used the word “execution” a lot.

No, not the kind evoking a firing squad if he did not succeed at turning around the New York-based Internet giant soon as he has long promised.

Instead, Armstrong was referring to reassuring big shareholders and Wall Street analysts that AOL was now in a mode of making sure all its many moves to turn around the company will finally begin to pay off.

“Basically, our point is going to be about fully operating around the strategy we’ve built,” said Armstrong in a wide-ranging interview. “It seems right for investors to ask about executing on what we have been doing for the last year and a half.”

It’s certainly the right message for the charismatic executive to be delivering, as he and other top AOL execs present their plans moving forward, especially after what has turned out to be a very hyperactive year.

After deep layoffs, a massive rejiggering of its management ranks and a number of shifts of its business focus, without much advertising increase to show for it yet, Armstrong has also pushed through a series of acquisitions.

It culminated in the high-profile and decidedly dramatic purchase of the Huffington Post in January for $350 million in cash.

Now, said Armstrong, deals will be taking a back seat to products.

“We are diligently staying on strategy and really focusing on products and services,” said Armstrong. “We have laid out the path we are on and now investors want proof of the concept.”

To Armstrong, that means the push of “branded content” and a continued focus on significant properties in key topic areas.

Tomorrow, in news that could worry investors, AOL will be noting that traffic is flat year over year, but explaining that it is due to the outsourcing of its sports and health sites.

“If you added that back in, we would have had a phenomenal year of growth,” said Armstrong. “Our main point will be that this is the right path for AOL.”

In fact, in an unusual wording, he said AOL was betting on the “urbanization” of the Web around big branded sites, which is, in many ways, exactly where the Web was a decade ago with Yahoo, Excite and others.

But Armstrong will be making the point that this retro idea is perfect for today, as marketers look for quality content that attracts big audiences, which has seen its most energetic application in the Huffington Post.

Thus, his linchpin remains the flashy news site’s even flashier co-founder Arianna Huffington, who has cut a very wide swath through AOL’s content efforts since Amstrong made her media czar of the company.

As Armstrong did, she also stressed the focus on unique visitors and ad growth, more video and a laser focus on local.

This includes shoving editorial into every AOL property, including unlikely ones such as Moviefone and MapQuest, and integrating it all to point back to the Huffington Post mothership.

“Much better editorial integration is a centerpiece of what we are doing, surfacing content in new places it was not before,” said Huffington, who used examples of local stories via its Patch unit that have gone global with a special push.

And by global, that also means the creation of new content sites in Europe and elsewhere, in order to build this unusual dream of a fully aggregating world.

“It is a big test of the HuffPo platform aggregation to do this,” said Huffington, who has clearly longed for the kind of money and staff to do this for a very long time. “It has moved a lot faster than I thought it would … but it feels good to be moving on so many fronts at once.”

Many fronts indeed, which might make investors pause. So far, those shareholders have had a continued wait-and-see attitude toward AOL, which has seen its stock decline almost 13 percent from its late 2009 IPO debut.

That’s mostly due to worries about whether the continued and expected fall-off of its lucrative access business can be met by similar increases in its ad business.

That share drop has been especially steep since the beginning of the year, but it has also not been drastic, indicating an interest in continuing to believe Armstrong’s confident — well, confidently delivered, at least — narrative.

As Citi’s Mark Mahaney wrote in a one-hand-other-hand note yesterday about the investor day:

Positives: 1) AOL still remains a top 5 U.S. Internet property; 2) In the latest quarter, AOL’s Display segment grew Y/Y for the first time in ~3 years, and this improvement seems sustainable; 3) At 4x ’11 EV/EBITDA, AOL’s valuation is among the lowest of any ’Net Stock. Negatives: 1) Deteriorating fundamentals; 2) Significant market share losses — ’Net usage, Display Advertising revenue & Search queries; 3) A significant profit hole from the structural decline of its Subs biz; 4) Substantial competitive risk; and 5) An unproven (@ AOL) management team.

“We all like Tim and what he says makes a lot of sense,” added one big investor, who is also attending and has many questions about the efficacy of what AOL is doing, in a common sentiment among its large shareholders. “But we also need to see real results soon.”

Hogan will take the spot last occupied by Patricia Chui, who was fired by AOL in April.

Hogan, who starts his new job June 26, will wear multiple hats: His official title is “Executive Features Editor”, and his duties also include running AOL TV. But his initial focus will be on Moviefone, which he wants to overhaul.

“We really want to take it from something that is successful as a ticket selling site, and try to make it into a robust gathering place for people who follow the movie industry and people who love movies,” he said. Hogan said he’ll hire fulltime editors and writers to beef up content on the site.

AOL fired Hogan’s predecessor after she distributed a memo informing Moviefone freelancers that their contracts were ending, but that they could contribute to the site as unpaid volunteers. Chui’s defenders said she had been treated unfairly by AOL, which was in the process of overhauling all of its editorial teams after acquiring the Huffington Post.

Hogan says he’s comfortable that any controversy  surrounding Chui’s departure has dissipated. “I talked to the folks there about that situation, and I understood where everybody was coming from,” he said.

Hogan became editor of VF.com in 2008; his most recent title was executive digital editor. (Disclosure: I’ve done freelance work for Vanity Fair in the past and am working on a project for the magazine now.)

Here’s a farewell bouquet from Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, via email: “I’ve had the pleasure of watching Michael Hogan hone his editorial skills over the past thirteen years from the assistant’s desk to being head of our digital team. I told him when I moved him to the website, that if he did his job well, he wouldn’t be working for me in three years. He beat the deadline. And he will be missed.”

As we’ve noted before, Facebook hasn’t replaced Google as the key traffic driver for most Web sites. But it sure is getting more important. Today’s lesson comes via the newest study from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which provides these helpful charts.

Here’s the traffic Google sends to some top news sites:

And here’s what Facebook looks like:

Important to acknowledge that the x-axis is completely different on the two graphs, so they end up telling two different stories.

That is: Facebook is a big deal for the Huffington Post, and contributes around 8 percent of inbound traffic. But that’s nothing compared to the 50 percent-plus Google sends to Examiner.com. Etc.

Still, there are a lot of sites that would like 8 percent of Huffington Post’s traffic. And I would be surprised if other sites see more than 8 percent on their internal logs.

Also of note: Twitter is a loud but relatively small traffic driver, Pew says: “Twitter appears at this point to play a relatively small role in sharing of links to news sources. Of the top 21 sites for which there were data, Twitter showed up as referring links to just nine. And for all but one of those nine, Twitter sent only about 1% of total traffic.”

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has grabbed one of Huffington Post’s top editors, Jai Singh, to become its editor-in chief.

The move is a big one in the online editorial arena. Before moving to the HuffPo as managing editor in 2009, which is now the key content unit of AOL, Singh ran CNET Networks.

UPDATE: Yahoo confirmed the hiring in a press release below.

A Huffington Post spokesman said:

“This is about geography–Jai made clear his desire to move back to California, where his family is located. He moved from California to work with us and, unfortunately, this job requires his being in the newsroom in New York. We loved working with him, wish him well with his new job, and look forward to staying in touch.”

Sources said Yahoo sent out an internal memo earlier tonight outlining the move, which is a whole new role at Yahoo. It’s below–natch!–from Yahoo Media head Mickie Rosen.

Hi Americas!

As we discussed at last week’s All Hands, we will continue to strengthen and grow Yahoo!’s position as the premier digital media company by expanding our original content, bringing unique voice to each property, turning Yahoo! into the place for big events, and helping to drive best-in-class tools and practices in social, SEO and publishing tools and operations.

In just the past few days since we were together, we set new records with our coverage of the Royal Wedding. And with last night’s news of Osama bin Laden’s death, we will likely create new ones. This proves the point that consumers turn to Yahoo! to be entertained and informed. We are the place consumers turn to when news happens.

With this context, I am thrilled to announce that Jai Singh will be joining Yahoo! as the Editor-in-Chief of the Yahoo! Media Network. Jai joins from AOL, where he was managing editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, responsible for the day-to-day editorial operations of all AOL content.

Prior to AOL, Jai was the Managing Editor of the Huffington Post where he developed its voice, doubled its number of vertical sections, and helped grow unique users by six-fold. Prior to the Huffington Post, Jai created CNET News.com in 1996, which quickly became a leading authority in technology news. As the editor-in-chief and senior vice president, he was in charge of all editorial and built a news staff that won scores of national journalism awards.

Jai will start May 31st. Below is the press release announcing his appointment.

Go Yahoo!

Best,

Mickie

And here’s the official press release about Singh, which is oddly buried in news of Yahoo’s performance in its Royal Wedding coverage:

Yahoo! Sets Records With The Royal Wedding;
Drives Largest Traffic Day for Single Event

Names Jai Singh Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo! Media Network

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 2, 2011–Yahoo! Inc. drove its largest traffic numbers for a single event last week when the world turned to the company for coverage of the Royal Wedding. Over a 24-hour period on Friday, April 29, 2011, Yahoo! drove more traffic and video to its coverage of the wedding than any previous event.

Preliminary internal data shows that Yahoo! sites serving Royal Wedding content drove 400 million page views on Friday, slightly higher than the traffic levels experienced following the Japan earthquake. Yahoo! delivered Royal Wedding content at a record-breaking 50,000 requests per second on Friday, seven times the average daily peak of approximately 7,500, and video traffic was 21% higher than the previous record. In comparison, there were approximately 33,000 requests-per-second following the Japan earthquake and today, at press time, peak requests-per-second was 40,000 for content related to the death of Osama bin Laden. Yahoo! also drove approximately 30 million unique users, 27 million video streams and 2.6 million live video streams over the 24-hour period on Friday.

In the last three months, coverage of the Royal Wedding and the Academy Awards has demonstrated that Yahoo! is where global consumers come to be entertained with rich content no other online company offers. Similarly, when news breaks, Yahoo! is the world’s trusted source for in-depth coverage, from the ongoing crisis in Japan to the death of Osama bin Laden. Yahoo! is the number one online site, reaching 180 million unique users and maintains a portfolio of 10 number one sites in the U.S., including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, omg!, Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Real Estate and Yahoo! TV (data: comScore March 2011). Yahoo! attracts more than 680 million users globally.

In effort to extend and accelerate the company’s leadership positions and further develop a unique and distinct voice across its brands, Yahoo! today announced that it has appointed Jai Singh, editor-in-chief for the Yahoo! Media Network.

As editor-in-chief, Singh will help transform the company as it increases its original content creation, build the unique voice and programming of Yahoo!’s leading properties, and help drive best-in-class tools and practices–such as publishing platforms, aggressive social and SEO distribution–and programming across all platforms. Singh will be a key member of the Yahoo! Media Network leadership team led by Mickie Rosen, senior vice president of Yahoo! Media Network. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Singh starts May 31 and will be spending significant time with editorial teams based in Santa Monica, Calif., and New York City.

“Jai’s appointment comes on the heels of one of the most event-filled news weeks in Yahoo! history, which underscores the importance of our editorial operations,” said Rosen. “Jai is one of the most advanced and respected editorial thinkers in digital media today, and a great addition to our editorial bench strength. It’s clear that when news breaks, the world turns to Yahoo!. Shaping our unique voice, and establishing industry best practices for the next generation of publishing will further Yahoo!’s success as the premier digital media company.”

Singh was most recently managing editor of the Huffington Post Media Group where he was in charge of all day-to-day news management and editorial operations. His responsibilities spanned across both Huffington Post editorial as well as AOL, including AOL content sites. In the two years Singh was at the Huffington Post, the site saw unprecedented growth–the number of sections more than doubled to 24, as did the number of editorial staff, and unique visitors grew nearly six fold, according to Comscore. Besides running the editorial operations, Singh helped drive product development in close partnership with the technology team. Singh was also the main point-of-contact and worked closely with Sales, Sales Development and Business Development.

Prior to the Huffington Post, Singh created CNET News.com in 1996, which quickly became a leading authority in technology news at the height of the Internet boom. At CNET.com, as the editor-in-chief and senior vice president, Singh was in charge of all editorial, including news and product reviews, as well as product development. Singh built a news staff that won scores of national journalism awards at atime when mainstream media were still skeptical of the Internet as a source of credible information.

Would it surprise you to know that BoomTown doesn’t really care anymore if TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington sidelines as a blogger while he makes investments in tech companies his tech news site covers?

In a post yesterday, titled “An Update to My Investment Policy,” Arrington made his seemingly cogent arguments that plenty of disclosure made it all “fine,” took one of his typical look-at-me swipes at anyone who dared to question this logic (apparently, we’re crappy “direct” competitors, so we haters have no standing to comment!) and presumably went on his merry investing way.

While I was first irked–because it was an appalling show to many of us cranky standards-insisting whiners–I soon realized Arrington had made a good argument about who he is and, frankly, who he has always been.

In other words, it’s a kind of there-he-goes-again thing, vaguely icky but hardly surprising and completely genuine.

Meanwhile, his new boss, AOL content head Arianna Huffington, pointed me to his post in an email.

When I asked her for an on-the-record comment, as usual, she politely and quickly complied, writing in support of Arrington:

“TechCrunch is committed to transparency. Michael has written about the guidelines he follows–that he rarely writes about companies in which he is an investor, and that, when he does, he clearly discloses this information. The same rules apply when TechCrunch’s writers cover these companies.”

Hold the phone.

Because while I kind of understand where Arrington is coming from, what I don’t understand is how this kind of convenient and on-the-fly rule-making can govern a much larger company whose strongly and repeatedly stated goal by Huffington herself is to create quality journalism.

Since I believed Huffington–whom I like very much as an Internet figure and as a friend–I was confused at what the rules for the whole of AOL content were now.

That’s why I sent her a long new list of questions to answer, which are:

1) What are, if any, the ethical guidelines about making investments for the editorial staff at HuffPo media group properties?

2) Since Arrington now seems to have permission to do so from you, can other editors at AOL properties do the same–that is, make very adjacent investments to what their site covers, as long as they disclose it? For example, can an editor who runs the entertainment site make investments in entertainment companies she/he has coverage responsibility over? (By the way, did you give him permission to make these investments? Did he ask?)

3) Is there anyone who polices what is fair coverage of competitors–i.e. companies competing with companies your editors invest in?

4) If an editor makes investments in a company and someone who works for them writes about that company, does that editor have to recuse himself from the story? Is that even possible?

5) Since you just fired someone for what you called an ethical breach–asking freelancers to work for free and also seemingly defending an attempt to curry favor with an advertiser/client–why is this not an ethical breach?

I had a lot more questions, still unanswered by Huffington, but you can see where this is going.

Simply put, does AOL, which is touting itself as a 21st-century media company, need to have 21st-century rules of the road? Or perhaps not so much?

UPDATE: Now, it is a real clown circus at AOL, with the company declaring that editorial personnel cannot make investments, except Arrington!

“As a rule, in order to avoid conflicts of interests, AOL Huffington Post Media Group editors, writers, and reporters may not have a financial interest in a company or industry that they regularly cover,” AOL said in a statement to Business Insider today, even though I nicely asked for a comment on the issue yesterday. “Arrington operates from a unique position.”

And how! Where do I get such a faboo ethical hall pass from Content Principal Huffington?

I suppose I should go all slouching-towards-Bethlehem here, and wring my hands over this unusual ruling, but what’s the use?

As you might have read: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

How did this all start, especially since I feel like this ridiculous tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot over Arrington’s investment-making might actually be my fault a little bit?

Here’s why:

On Tuesday night around 10 pm (just when I start getting revved up), I wrote a testy email to Arrington’s bosses at AOL–Huffington and CEO Tim Armstrong–as well as the Internet portal’s sharp PR head, asking for a response about what seemed to me to be a glaring conflict of interest at TechCrunch related to new investment activity by Arrington and the site’s coverage of those particular companies he had invested in.

It was all disclosed, of course, but it still felt, as I said, icky.

And, given the recent and loudly stated goal of promoting quality journalism by Huffington–including the recent dismissal of AOL’s Moviefone site editor over what the company considered ethical lapses–it seemed pertinent to ask.

Mostly because I don’t think they actually knew much–if at all–about Arrington’s increasing investing action. Armstrong said as much in an email to me, and Huffington assured me they were going to check it out tout de suite.

But rather than the answer I was waiting on, up popped Arrington’s missive yesterday, which I assume came after his bosses asked for some info on this.

In it, he explained his controversial decision to go back into investing again, in what is clearly a more significant manner.

It was a practice he had abandoned years earlier, apparently after being pecked by detractors for it.

But, dear readers, no more! Let Arrington be Arrington!

And that seems to be a talented blogger with a flare for the dramatic, with a clearly sharply-honed news nose and sassy writing skills, but a scribe who much prefers to be a playah than just an observer and chronicler of that play.

And, after more reflection, I thought: Well, maybe it is a better idea for Arrington to go play with all the boys in Silicon Valley, which would probably be more fun than taking flack for lack of traditional journalistic ethics he never ascribed to in the first place.

I once jokingly nicknamed Arrington Yertle the Turtle after the Dr. Seuss book on one dubious king of one small pond in Sala-Ma-Sond, after he went particularly nuts on the topic of news-embargo breaking.

That diatribe on how he saw news rules–which is to say, there aren’t any that bind him–was vintage Arrington, too. And, after reading his latest post, I suddenly realized that it’s pointless to give a turtle a hard time for not being a fish.

But Huffington is another story. She has put herself in word and deed right into the center of the debate on where news is going on the Web, especially after AOL paid $315 million for her Huffington Post news and opinion site.

Huffington has certainly taken a lot of hits over the years as the HuffPo has grown, some deserved, but she has clearly led an impressive effort.

In fact, I think the cute-kitten and celebrity-loving angle played up by her detractors to dismiss her is silliness, because she and the Huffington Post are clearly more than that and are obviously having a major impact on the future direction of content in the digital age.

But that power she has sought also gives her a responsibility to say exactly what that means on a real and granular and consistent level, beyond the platitudes of wanting to make great journalism that she declares all the time now.

In other words, very specifically: What does Arianna Huffington stand for in regards to journalism? What are her rules and standards and codes? And, perhaps more importantly, what does she not stand up for?

These are questions I hope Huffington–who is really good at smacking back at criticism, too (See: the New York Times’ Bill Keller)–will address in one of her patented blog-xplosions and many times over, too.

Until then, here’s a link to my very long and very detailed ethics disclosure on All Things Digital, which is exactly how our little site thinks it should be in the digital age.

In short, besides signing the Dow Jones Code of Conduct–standard at The Wall Street Journal and other DJ publications–all our editorial staff is required to also pen their own in-plain-English personal and detailed account of disclosures that are pertinent to their job.

(You can read an extensive interview with me on the subject, in fact, which was posted here by Two Bananas Marketing, this week.)

My ATD disclosure is probably the most detailed of all of them, since I gay-married Megan Smith a dozen years ago. She later became a VP at Google, which I cover from time to time, especially related to other companies I focus on more, such as Yahoo.

Most of the time, if you care to read my posts on Google, I am probably tougher and snarkier than not, mostly because I know the search giant from its earliest days.

And, even though I once wrote extensively for the Journal about Google since its founding and before Megan arrived there, I thought it wise to lay it all out in detailed detail.

(By the way, if you want to try to tweak me by asking what News Corp.-owned Fox News’ ethics rules are, I don’t know, as ATD belongs to Dow Jones, which has had them forever. I will say, though, that Roger Ailes often freaks me out.)

In any case, as Arrington preaches, the more disclosure the better, and perhaps I should say even more so here, given the current swirl, by noting explicitly that I garner exactly no financial benefits from my relationship with Megan.

That might seem odd, because she certainly earns more. But I don’t know how much nor do I ask, since we have separate bank accounts and she always pays up–well, almost always–when half the bills are due. While it sounds painfully un-romantic, we only spend overall what each of us can afford equally in an exact 50-50 split.

In addition, I also legally signed away all rights to inheritance–although I had no such marriage rights in the first place, being gay–of Megan’s assets, which are in a trust for her relatives and our sons (for when they are too old to have any fun).

More to the point, I believe this makes me the only person to marry an exec at a hot Silicon Valley company with no prospect of any gold-digging.

Thus, I clearly would make the worst investor ever–not that I ever invest in tech or plan to while I am a reporter covering the sector.

Thank god, I suppose, that Michael Arrington is there to take up the slack.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has certainly had a very busy year, from the continued massive restructuring of the troubled Internet portal to ziggy-zaggy strategic shifts in content and advertising to a series of frenetic acquisitions, capped by the $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post earlier this year.

Also, let’s not forget all those fabulous appearances with the mediagenic Arianna Huffington.

So, it was nice to get Armstrong to calm down for a minute–before he headed off for an off-site in Half Moon Bay, Calif., with his senior staff–and talk about how AOL plans to digest all those things.

That’s especially important, since Wall Street is still wondering about that, too. A lot, in fact, with AOL shares down 29 percent year over year, which is not exactly a shining endorsement by investors of Armstrong’s tenure.

Presumably, he’ll be explaining it all when the company reports its first-quarter earnings in a week, on May 4.

Until then, here’s his video interview with BoomTown: