Huffington Post contributors griping in the wake of the site’s sale to AOL? Sure. But it’s also the same gripe that AOL users made in the dial-up era.

And–pay attention, angry bloggers–some of those AOL users eventually got paid!

The bad news: They had to go to court to get their cash, via a class action suit they filed in 1999. And they didn’t see a check until last year.

As the Columbia Journalism Review reminds us, the old, pre-Time Warner AOL used to rely on an army of volunteers–”community leaders”–to do essential gruntwork like moderating chatrooms. Wired called it a “cyber-sweatshop.“

And while it took a decade, the plaintiffs in the AOL case did end up with something for their trouble–a $15 million settlement, handed out last year.

Of course, 30 percent of that–$4.5 million–went to the lawyers, court documents show. But that’s still $10.5 million divvied up among a couple of thousand former chatroom monitors. You can’t retire on that, but you could buy a few MacBook Airs.

So could HuffPo’s angry bloggers get something for their troubles? Seems like a tough case to make: One big difference between AOL’s unpaid workers and HuffPo’s unpaid writers is that AOL really did treat its workers like workers.

It recruited them through want ads, held them to time commitments and compensated them with benefits like free or discounted dial-up access. (Remember that?)

HuffPo’s writers, on the other hand, simply handed the site some copy, which it ran–just like the people who submit op-ed pieces to newspapers. And I never hear about them demanding cash for their work. It seems quite clear that the trade is your words/their distribution.

Still, you never know! And I’m sure there’s at least one attorney, somewhere, who’s ready to try it out. Let’s check back in a decade and see how it panned out.

AOL CFO Artie Minson prepped investors for the call with a memo laying out expectations. Short version: AOL thinks HuffPo will earn about $10 million on revenue of $50 million this year (as long as you’re okay with using “adjusted OIBDA” as a proxy for “profit”). It also thinks the purchase will save it $20 million a year, but it’s going to spend around $20 million on restructuring charges when the deal goes through.

I’ll liveblog the call below:

8:02 am: Greetings! About to start now.

8:03 am: On the call: Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington, Artie Minson.

8:03 am: Armstrong makes a Super Bowl joke that I can’t quite follow, and I like football. But now praising Arianna, co-founder Kenny Lerer and outgoing AOL CEO Eric Hippeau.

“The Huffington Post is one of the best properties on the Internet.” Armstrong, Huffington and Minson are all BlackBerry users.

8:06 am: On revenue: This gives an opportunity to serve more brand marketers, who are “very interested” in the scale this gives us.

8:07 am: Spending next 30 days on integration. “Really synergies to be had.”

Next steps: Next 72 hours communicating with employees, talking to partners. 1,500 AOL workers on the phone this morning explaining deal to others.

“This may be the smallest disruption” internally of any deal I’ve worked on. Majority of integration done within 35 to 40 days.

8:09 am: We’ve looked at a bunch of companies, though we’re mainly going to concentrate on organic growth. But Arianna is great [many superlatives] and she “also happens to be a woman.”

8:10 am: Here’s Arianna.

8:11 am: “Amazing” how aligned two orgs are.

8:11 am: HuffPo was profitable last year. We were thinking about bringing in additional investors last year, and an IPO down the line. But this made perfect sense.

8:12 am: This deal provides a “dramatic acceleration” for the plans we already had.

8:13 am: Some praise for Patch, AOL’s local strategy.

8:14 am: Can’t wait to start!

8:14 am: Alrighty, then. Here’s Artie Minson with some nuts and bolts.

Actually, it’s some color on the deal. But a lot of it is in the prepared remarks he put out earlier this morning.

8:15 am: Again, $20 million in cost savings here. And again, we’ll have to pay up for restructuring: $20 million for cuts, and $10 million for purchase price.

8:17 am: Still basically reading from prepared remarks. Some bookkeeping talk re: compensation accounting.

8:18 am: Remember, display ad growth coming will finally start showing up second half of this year.

8:19 am: Q&A:

Q: Talk about content strategy. Does HuffPo become hub for content going forward? Does it replace Seed? And how long is Arianna’s contract?

A: “The press” has been talking about our content strategy, so let me be clear–we’re focusing on premium content. Things like Seed and StudioNow are platforms–you can do whatever you want with them, different quality levels, at different types of scale.

And then the other thing that is important about those platforms is the ability they give us to work with advertisers.

One of our main interests in HuffPo is their technology and publishing system. So now we have multiple systems [which he is saying is a good thing]. “Our content strategy hasn’t changed.” The “stuff that was out in the press about the AOL Way” was just one way of doing things. [This is not very convincing]

Arianna, tell us how long you’re going to stay.

8:24 am: Arianna: “I’ve told Tim I want to stay here forever. I want this to be the last act of my life.” Anything I want to do I can do here.

[Sorry, missed next part but it was a defense/explanation of content strategy.]

8:26 am: Armstrong: Arianna has a multiyear contract, but it’s open-ended.

8:27 am: Arianna: By the way, we’re going to bring back commenting to AOL stories, and socialize them.

8:28 am: Q: Why buy instead of partnering? Were there other bidders? Also, how will HuffPo politics affect AOL?

8:28 am: Armstrong: We do partnerships where there is “limited upside to those arrangements” so ” we can really spend time on the areas we want to win”–i.e., we don’t care about sports, we do care about women.

“Arianna is somebody we’d rather have inside our building than outside our building.”

“If there were or weren’t bidders on the other side,” I think we got the right price.

8:30 am: Arianna. “As we’ve said, again and again, Huffington Post was not for sale….Nobody was in a hurry to cash out, everybody believed that we could do an IPO down the road.” It’s just that Tim gave us a great offer. [hrrrm.]

On politics–we used to be all about politics, now we’re not. Just 15 percent of our traffic. We have a divorce section now.

Talking up AOL’s “college” section.

8:33 am: Q: For Arianna: More on Patch, please. What do think about what AOL’s done with it, and what you can do with it?

8:33 am: [Every time Arianna says "local level" I think she's saying "locker level." It's happened at least twice, maybe more, on this call.]

There’s a “greatest person of the day” feature we have, and I think Patch should use that. [Or maybe vice-versa, sorry.] I also like their five percent “giving back” rule, cause marketing, etc.

8:35 am: Armstrong: Again, we can do national and local. That’s important. NFL rights are important, and so are local news stories.

8:36 am: Q: Who’s going to sell what? And can you talk about pricing disparity between AOL and HuffPo?

8:37 am: Armstrong: “We would like to maintain all the people from both sales forces [except for Greg Coleman!]. I think we will end up with a large-scale, large-property organization–I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, though.

On sell-through rate: Slightly lower at HuffPo, because they’ve been ramping up traffic, and sales force. On CPM, same story. So we can bring up sell-through rate and CPM, and have a larger sales force. [This is pretty much the best argument for the deal that Armstrong can make.]

[BTW: Good back-channel discussion on Twitter right now about AOL's SEO skills, and the people behind it. None of that coming up during this call right now.]

[Sorry, I meant HuffPo's SEO skills, much of which stem from blueprint BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti set out.]

Q: Why not use equity for this deal?

A: Because our equity is priced too low, essentially. But HuffPo employees did roll over 25 percent of deal consideration into AOL options. So as that equity gets more valuable, they’ll get upside.

8:45 am: Q: In your statement, you talked about OIBDA growth in 2013. More on that please.

Minson–probably going to stick to my prepared remarks on that one.

8:46 am: Last Q: Your acqusitions have been about toolsets or content. As you think about others going forward, what else do you want?

Armstrong: We have long-term vision. On plumbing: We’ve wanted to get platforms and plumbing straightened out, and we’re doing that now. Think about the bones or foundation of a very large property. That’s why we’ve been doing infrastructure, like with video–5Min and GoViral and StudioNow.

Going forward, we’ll be doing infrastructure. And we’ll continue to look at “media properties and media brands” that fit our strategy. [Remember, Web site owners: HuffPo just got 10x revenue.

8:50 am: Minson: But we're very price sensitive and we've walked away from deals.

8:50 am: Arianna: And we like women!

8:51 am: Armstrong sums up: Success "in the Internet space" requires vision and execution. That's this deal. And remember, content and brands become more valuable as tech gets faster, more advanced. And "expect us to stay on strategy and on point" going forward. "We're going to overcommunicate" with both sets of employees as we integrate. [You've been warned!]

And we’re done. Thanks for reading.

[Photo credit: Arianna Huffington]

Steve Case is right to point out that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s “one plus one equals eleven” logic didn’t pan out during the first boom, when Case was running AOL and engineered the disastrous Time Warner deal.

But here, at least, both companies are trying to do the same thing: Make a lot of Web stuff at a low price, and sell ads against it.

So maybe AOL + HuffPo won’t equal 11. And maybe 10x Huffington Post’s reported 2010 revenue is a very pre-Lehman multiple. But the broad strokes here make sense to me:

AOL is pushing its workers very hard to make more content it can sell. HuffPo is a content-making machine:

Huffington Post still has the reputation as a left-leaning political site written by Arianna Huffington’s celebrity pals. In reality, it is most concerned with attracting eyeballs anyway it can. Sometimes it’s with well-regarded investigative journalism, and much more often it’s via very aggressive, very clever aggregation. And sometimes it’s by simply paying very, very close attention to what Google wants, which leads to stories like “What Time Does The Super Bowl Start?“

However they’ve done it, it’s worked–much more efficiently than AOL, which is headed in that direction as well. AOL reaches about 112 million people in the U.S. every month with a staff of 5,000. The Huffington Post, which employed about 200 people prior to the deal, gets to about 26 million.*

AOL can start selling this stuff immediately:

HuffPo reportedly generated around $30 million in revenue last year, but that was done using a relatively small staff that sales chief Greg Coleman had just started building. AOL’s much bigger sales group, which has just about finished its lengthy reorg, should be able to boost that performance immediately.

AOL can afford it:

Tim Armstrong’s company ended 2010 with $725 million in cash, much of which it generated by selling off old assets. This seems like a relatively easy check to write and one that shouldn’t involve a lot of overlapping staff–AOL figures it will save $20 million annually in cost overlaps, but that it will spend about $20 million this year on restructuring charges. HuffPo is about four percent of AOL’s size, and several of its top executives are already stepping aside. (This is the second time in two years that sales boss Greg Coleman has been moved out of a job by Tim Armstrong.) The biggest risk here will be in the way that Huffington, who is now editor in chief for all of AOL’s edit staff, gets along with her new employees. On the other hand, morale is low enough at many AOL sites that it will be hard to make things worse.

AOL Gets a Really Big Brand:

There’s some downside risk to attaching Arianna Huffington’s name to a big, mainstream media brand, as her politics and/or persona might scare off some readers and/or advertisers. But two years after Armstrong arrived from Google, AOL still doesn’t have a definable identity, other than “the Web site your parents might still pay for even though there’s no reason to do so.” Being known as “the guys who own Huffington Post” is infinitely better than that.

HuffPo’s “pro” list is much shorter, but only because there’s not much to think about for them: Huffington, co-founder Kenneth Lerer and their backers get a nice return on the five years and $37 million they put into the company. And those who stay on get to leverage the benefits of a much larger acquirer–access to more eyballs and more advertisers. Easy enough to understand.

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Uploaded by TZA. – Click for more funny videos.

*(Something about these numbers, culled from AOL’s and Huffington Post’s own releases, doesn’t add up, as AOL now says the combined company will have 117 million uniques. But it’s close enough for now.)

The Huffington Post has done a video that Facebook probably should have churned out weeks ago: Easy-to-follow instructions on how to take back control of your privacy settings.

The huge social networking site has gotten into media hot water of late due to its aggressive push to suck up every known piece of salable data in the universe before Google (GOOG) does so.

Kind of like a giant digital vacuum cleaner gone berserk.

Thus, HuffPo to the rescue!

Titled “Facebook Privacy Settings: How To Fix Your Profile In 2 Minutes,” the post notes:

“To exert full control over your privacy on Facebook, you have to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options.”

To say nothing of the ongoing horror of being poked.

However you feel about Facebook’s privacy snafus, here’s the Huffington Post’s decent how-to video to help untangle the hairball:

The Web’s dominant traffic counter is in the midst of overhauling its traffic-counting system in response to years of complaints from publishers who insist that their traffic has been undercounted.

Turns out, the publishers were often right.

ComScore’s old data, for instance, say the Huffington Post attracted 9.95 million unique visitors in December. But its new numbers peg HuffPo’s December traffic at 20 million uniques.

The difference is that comScore’s (SCOR) old system tracked small panels of users and extrapolated their traffic patterns across the Web. But its new “hybrid” system uses panel data along with records generated by actual visits to the site, counted via tracking cookies. Publishers that cooperate with comScore (SCOR) agree to let the company “tag” every Web page on their sites.

“This is a much much better, much more methodologically rigorous way of doing this,” says Linda Abraham, comScore’s chief marketing officer.

ComScore has been rolling out the new system for months and says it can now use it to report on 25 percent of the 50 biggest sites on the Web. Another 50 percent of the top sites have agreed to work with the system, Abraham says.

ComScore lets publishers who are already clients participate in the program for free. But it will charge everyone else $10,000 a year, which the company says helps cover the cost of new servers and other equipment it needs to process the new deluge of data.

UPDATE: Some more detail on comScore’s fees, which generated a Web flare-up after this piece ran. Abraham notes that comScore’s set-up fee is $5,000, which she says covers implementation costs and gives publishers access to its data for six months; comScore charges publishers who want to keep receiving reports an additional $5,000 for each subsequent six-month period. However, Abraham notes, “If you choose not to purchase report access, you are free to do that, and we’ll continue to report you as hybrid, free of charge, as long as you continue to beacon correctly.” For more from Abraham, see her response to Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis’s criticism; here’s the company’s blog post on the subject.

The new system doesn’t necessarily generate a traffic boost. AOL’s (AOL) Living channel saw its numbers decline by two percent in the new system, for instance, and its radio site saw traffic drop by 20 percent. AOL’s overall traffic, though, is up nine percent by comScore’s count.

Hybrid measurement is particularly kind to small Web sites and those that generate a lot of traffic from users who visit while at work. Both categories have always been difficult for comScore to measure using panels.

TheStreet.com (TSCM), for instance, has watched its traffic shoot up 86 percent under the new system, to 3.3 million uniques. That’s still much less than the site itself reports–in its last quarterly filing, the financial network reported an audience of 8.1 million uniques.

The fact that comScore is tracking some Web sites using the new system and the rest of them with the old one will make things a bit sticky for some time. The company has stopped releasing its monthly Top 50 list until May, when it says it will have moved almost all participating sites into the hybrid system.

But some sites won’t end up working with comScore at all, which means that comScore will measure them with its old panel methodology. At some point, the company will be presenting apples-to-oranges numbers when it compares different sites.

Does any of this really matter? Yes and no.

Ad buyers do pay attention to comScore rankings when figuring out where to place their money, even as Web publishers have presented their own, higher numbers from their own server logs. For some sites, the new data will make their pitches more compelling.

On the other hand, this does nothing to solve the real problem facing most publishers: They can’t sell ads against all of their inventory, no matter who’s counting it. And a measurement system won’t ever be able to help with that one.

That’s the idea behind a brace of new sales guys, brought in by sales head Greg Coleman, who is himself a newish addition to the site.

The hires:

• Andy Wiedlin, formerly at News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, and Yahoo before that, will run West Coast sales.
• Phil Cara, formerly at AOL, and Yahoo before that, will run East Coast sales.
• Peter Cherukuri, the former publisher of Roll Call, will run sales in Washington, D.C.
• Brian Kaminsky, formerly at Reuters, and Yahoo prior to that, will run sales operations out of New York.

Note the connection for three of the four new guys? Not a coincidence.

Coleman was the longtime Yahoo (YHOO) sales head until he got pushed out in 2007. He resurfaced last year as head of AOL’s (AOL) sales group but left less than three months into the job when new CEO Tim Armstrong brought in his guy.

At the new gig, Coleman’s plan is to use his new/old team to convince advertisers to start spending significant money. The site was on track to do something in the $10 million range last year, but CEO Eric Hippeau wants to goose that number to $100 million in the next few years in order to justify the $37 million that investors have sunk into the company.

Coleman came to the site last fall when it already had a good traffic story to tell–comScore (SCOR) counted 6.8 million unique users in September, which is more than WSJ.com’s 6.7 million. And that story will get better very soon, as comScore rolls out its new “hybrid” measuring system. Coleman says the new numbers will push Huffpo above the 17 million mark.

His team still needs to battle the perception that Huffpo is an all-politics (and lefty, to boot) site, since advertisers are often leery about anything political.

Sure enough, as I’m typing this Monday night, the site’s front page is dominated by Washington coverage–a banner headline about the Republican Party’s opposition to something called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And no matter what Coleman and his guys say, no one’s going to confuse the site with, say, Fox News.

Still, the site has long argued that it isn’t dominated by political coverage, and Coleman now says less than 25 percent of its traffic comes from that stuff. A heavy dose of entertainment/media coverage–did you know the dude from “300″ now has man boobs and a paunch?–helps make that claim plausible.

Will advertisers buy it? People who aren’t Greg Coleman tell me marketers were already warming to the site this year, a result of work done by the previous regime. And in large part due to interest from entertainment companies pushing new movies and TV shows.

But if Coleman and his employers want to hit their $100 million goal, they’ll need to do a lot more work. For more on Coleman’s strategy, check out his conversation with Kara Swisher from last fall.

THE HUFFINGTON POST NAMES SOFTBANK MANAGING PARTNER ERIC HIPPEAU NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

New York, NY, June 15, 2009 — The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com) announced today that Eric Hippeau, managing partner of SoftBank Capital and former CEO of Ziff-Davis, has been named the company’s new chief executive officer. Current CEO Betsy Morgan, who is leaving the company, will be working closely with Eric Hippeau on the transition. The Huffington Post co-founders Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer made the announcement. Over the last year, The Huffington Post has been the fastest growing news site as measured by Nielsen Online and in December raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners.

Mr. Hippeau has worked closely with The Huffington Post since SoftBank Capital led a Series-A company financing in 2006. Prior to SoftBank Capital, Mr. Hippeau was CEO of Ziff-Davis, when it was the largest media company in the technology sector. Mr. Hippeau led the company’s online initiatives, including the development of ZDNet into an online brand. He was also instrumental in SoftBank’s first investment in Yahoo! in 1995. In addition, Mr. Hippeau was responsible for founding ZDTV, a cable channel dedicated to technology and the Internet, and an early success in integrating television and the Web.

Betsy Morgan, who will also be vacating her seat on the Company Board, joined The Huffington Post as CEO from CBS News in October 2007. Over the last 18 months, Ms. Morgan has played a pivotal role in expanding the company’s audience, content and business ventures. Since she assumed the role of CEO, The Huffington Post has seen a six-fold increase in its audience and has doubled its advertising revenue. The company has nearly doubled its staff and expanded its senior team to include a Chief Financial Officer, Managing Editor and a SVP of Business Development. Under her leadership, the site has expanded its content verticals from five to ten and raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners.

Said Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post, “I’m delighted that Eric is joining the company as CEO. Having worked closely with him for the last three years, I know firsthand what an invaluable asset he has been in our expansion. And now, given his impressive background in the industry and his intimate knowledge of HuffPost, Eric is uniquely able to hit the ground running as the company takes its expansion to the next level. Betsy has been the perfect leader for The Huffington Post during a critical period in the company’s life and helped build our brand tremendously. I have loved working with her.”

Said Kenneth Lerer, chairman of The Huffington Post, “Betsy has done a fantastic job as the CEO of our company. Under her leadership, we have significantly increased our traffic and advertising and have built a lasting brand. We wish her all the best and we will be working with her closely on a smooth transition. Eric promises to bring an unmatched set of experiences in publishing, web businesses, advertising and technology that will allow us to grow our company across the board.”

Said Eric Hippeau, “As an early investor in HuffPost, I recognized the site’s potential to redefine how news and opinion is disseminated in the digital world — thanks to Arianna’s and Kenny’s vision. I am looking forward to being part of the team which will establish The Huffington Post as a major, long-lasting media brand.”

Said Betsy Morgan, “As a shareholder in the company, I look forward to HuffPost’s continued success. The site is now more than blogging and politics; it is a genuine source of the news of the day and it reflects the culture of our times. I have assembled an amazing team that will continue to generate a fantastic product and grow the business. Together we have exceeded many of our goals, moving the company beyond the political cycle of last year to realize broad success every day.”

Mr. Hippeau joined Ziff-Davis in 1989 as Publisher of PC magazine and he became its Chairman and CEO in 1993. In 1995, SoftBank acquired Ziff-Davis, and Mr. Hippeau continued in the role of CEO until 2000, when the company was sold. During his career at Ziff-Davis, Mr. Hippeau recognized early the prospects for the growth of online media. Under his stewardship, ZDNet became one of the earliest examples of a strong online business model evolving from traditional magazine content. He also directed several successful magazines and marketing service launches in the technology and Internet fields.

Mr. Hippeau was President of SoftBank International Ventures, where he established SoftBank’s international private equity funds and expanded them into Europe, Latin America and Asia. He was also SoftBank Capital’s board representative for its direct investments in industry leading companies, such as Yahoo Inc, Geocities and CNET. Mr. Hippeau serves on the Boards of Yahoo, Inc and Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide.

THE HUFFINGTON POST NAMES SOFTBANK MANAGING PARTNER ERIC HIPPEAU NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

New York, NY, June 15, 2009 — The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com) announced today that Eric Hippeau, managing partner of SoftBank Capital and former CEO of Ziff-Davis, has been named the company’s new chief executive officer. Current CEO Betsy Morgan, who is leaving the company, will be working closely with Eric Hippeau on the transition. The Huffington Post co-founders Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer made the announcement. Over the last year, The Huffington Post has been the fastest growing news site as measured by Nielsen Online and in December raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners.

Mr. Hippeau has worked closely with The Huffington Post since SoftBank Capital led a Series-A company financing in 2006. Prior to SoftBank Capital, Mr. Hippeau was CEO of Ziff-Davis, when it was the largest media company in the technology sector. Mr. Hippeau led the company’s online initiatives, including the development of ZDNet into an online brand. He was also instrumental in SoftBank’s first investment in Yahoo! in 1995. In addition, Mr. Hippeau was responsible for founding ZDTV, a cable channel dedicated to technology and the Internet, and an early success in integrating television and the Web.

Betsy Morgan, who will also be vacating her seat on the Company Board, joined The Huffington Post as CEO from CBS News in October 2007. Over the last 18 months, Ms. Morgan has played a pivotal role in expanding the company’s audience, content and business ventures. Since she assumed the role of CEO, The Huffington Post has seen a six-fold increase in its audience and has doubled its advertising revenue. The company has nearly doubled its staff and expanded its senior team to include a Chief Financial Officer, Managing Editor and a SVP of Business Development. Under her leadership, the site has expanded its content verticals from five to ten and raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners.

Said Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post, “I’m delighted that Eric is joining the company as CEO. Having worked closely with him for the last three years, I know firsthand what an invaluable asset he has been in our expansion. And now, given his impressive background in the industry and his intimate knowledge of HuffPost, Eric is uniquely able to hit the ground running as the company takes its expansion to the next level. Betsy has been the perfect leader for The Huffington Post during a critical period in the company’s life and helped build our brand tremendously. I have loved working with her.”

Said Kenneth Lerer, chairman of The Huffington Post, “Betsy has done a fantastic job as the CEO of our company. Under her leadership, we have significantly increased our traffic and advertising and have built a lasting brand. We wish her all the best and we will be working with her closely on a smooth transition. Eric promises to bring an unmatched set of experiences in publishing, web businesses, advertising and technology that will allow us to grow our company across the board.”

Said Eric Hippeau, “As an early investor in HuffPost, I recognized the site’s potential to redefine how news and opinion is disseminated in the digital world — thanks to Arianna’s and Kenny’s vision. I am looking forward to being part of the team which will establish The Huffington Post as a major, long-lasting media brand.”

Said Betsy Morgan, “As a shareholder in the company, I look forward to HuffPost’s continued success. The site is now more than blogging and politics; it is a genuine source of the news of the day and it reflects the culture of our times. I have assembled an amazing team that will continue to generate a fantastic product and grow the business. Together we have exceeded many of our goals, moving the company beyond the political cycle of last year to realize broad success every day.”

Mr. Hippeau joined Ziff-Davis in 1989 as Publisher of PC magazine and he became its Chairman and CEO in 1993. In 1995, SoftBank acquired Ziff-Davis, and Mr. Hippeau continued in the role of CEO until 2000, when the company was sold. During his career at Ziff-Davis, Mr. Hippeau recognized early the prospects for the growth of online media. Under his stewardship, ZDNet became one of the earliest examples of a strong online business model evolving from traditional magazine content. He also directed several successful magazines and marketing service launches in the technology and Internet fields.

Mr. Hippeau was President of SoftBank International Ventures, where he established SoftBank’s international private equity funds and expanded them into Europe, Latin America and Asia. He was also SoftBank Capital’s board representative for its direct investments in industry leading companies, such as Yahoo Inc, Geocities and CNET. Mr. Hippeau serves on the Boards of Yahoo, Inc and Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide.

Huffpo’s newest round values the company at about $100 million, which means its investors think it will be worth much more one day. That’s the same value, more or less, that investors place on TheStreet (TSCM), even though it generated some $65 million last year and has about $80 million in cash on hand. McIntyre:

Huffington has several important advantages over TheStreet. For starters, it does not rely on one person for most of its traffic. If Jim Cramer left TSCM, the company would be in real trouble.

Second, Huffington has diversified beyond it political news base. Over the next year or so, it will become clear whether that was a good idea or not. Adding “style” and “entertainment” sections puts it into competition with a lot of other online success stories.

Third, Huffington aggregates a lot of content from around the web. The cost of doing this is remarkably low. The company pays little if anything to most of its bloggers. TheStreet has a relatively large staff and produces most of its own content.

The final difference between the two companies is probably the most telling. At its current rate of growth, which could be hurt by the end of the 2008 election process, Huffington may double in size again over the next year or so, if its efforts to diversify its content works.

It would be hard to find analysts who believe TSCM is going to expand its audience or revenue at a rate of 100%.”

I can think of some counter-arguments to this, but they’re half-hearted: TSCM’s affluent readers should be worth more to advertisers than Huffpo’s; TSCM still has a revenue stream from subscribers to buffet it from ad market turmoil; Huffpo’s aggregation model isn’t unique and could be replicated by anyone who wants to hire some devilishly clever Web editors, etc.

But better to acknowledge that the HuffPo crew have built something very big, very fast. And that anyone who does that gets rewarded for it, even in an econalypse.