The Rise of Huffington Post

  • HuffPo launches

    HuffPo launches
    Arianna Huffington launches group blog, Huffington Post, with former AOL exec Kenneth Lerer and MIT grad Jonah Peretti. The move gets mixed reaction, given her visible role on the politics and celebrity stages. (Photo courtesy of By World Economic Forum [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
  • HuffPo wins Webby Award

    HuffPo wins Webby Award
    Huffington Post wins a 2006 Webby Award for Political Blog. (Photo courtesy of David Vignoni (http://icon-king.com) [LGPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html) or LGPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)
  • HuffPo dabbles in venture capital funding

    HuffPo dabbles in venture capital funding
    Huffington Post receives $5 million investment from venture capital firms like Softbank Capital and Greycroft Partners, to be used for business expansion. Softbank executive Eric Hippeau would eventually become CEO of HuffPo. (Photo courtesy of (URW)++ Design & Development (Wilinckx at nl.wikipedia) (Transferred from nl.wikipedia) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons)
  • HuffPo says it's going indy

    HuffPo hires Newsweek journalist Melinda Henneberger as political editor and announces plans to start independent reporting, in addition to opinion and aggregated news content.
  • HuffPo rewards top commenters

    HuffPo rewards top commenters
    Huffington Post announces that the users who leave the most comments on HuffPo content will become featured bloggers for the site.
  • HuffPo nets another Webby Award

    HuffPo nets another Webby Award
    Huffington Post receives another Webby Award for Political Blog. (Photo courtesy of David Vignoni (http://icon-king.com) [LGPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html) or LGPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)
  • HuffPo Chicago launches

    HuffPo Chicago launches
    Huffington Post launches its first local news site in Chicago, embracing the hyperlocal news trend and extending its advertising strategy to the local level.
  • HuffPo strikes it rich again

    HuffPo strikes it rich again
    Reports announce that Arianna Huffington has raised $15 million in fundraising from investors for even further expansion of Huffington Post. HuffPo would eventually raise a total of $35 million in capital investments. (Photo courtesy of (URW)++ Design & Development (Wilinckx at nl.wikipedia) (Transferred from nl.wikipedia) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons)
  • Huffington keeps citizen blogging in the family

    Arianna Huffington brings her godson, Matthew Palevsky, on board to run the site's citizen journalism project, OffTheBus, which attracted 12,000 contributors during the 2008 presidential campaign.
  • HuffPo Investigative Fund launches

    HuffPo Investigative Fund launches
    Arianna Huffington announces a new nonprofit fund to support investigative journalism by HuffPo staff and freelancers.
  • HuffPo reporter gets White House press pass

    HuffPo reporter gets White House press pass
    Huffington Post causes a stir when staff reporter Nico Pitney is called on during a press conference by President Obama to ask a seemingly staged question.
  • HuffPo Denver launches

    HuffPo Denver launches
    Huffington Post launches its Denver site, keeping in its recent tradition of hyperlocal news.
  • HuffPo gets a new president and revenue officer

    Huffington Post hires former Yahoo and AOL exec, Greg Coleman, as President and Chief Revenue Officer. Coleman was let go from AOL soon after Tim Armstrong took over as Chairman and CEO.
  • HuffPo Los Angeles launches

    HuffPo Los Angeles launches
    Huffington Post launches its Los Angeles site.
  • HuffPo implements sponsored Tweets

    HuffPo implements sponsored Tweets
    Huffington Post starts selling placement ads within comments section of articles and includes sponsored messages in the site's live Twitter feed. (Photo coutesy of en:User:GageSkidmore, modified by User:Cpro (Own work, modified from File:Twitter logo.svg)
  • HuffPo Twitter site launches

    HuffPo Twitter site launches
    Huffington Post launches a Twitter-specific site, as its "latest integration of social media." Some say it's HuffPo's way of directing content to social media users and competing with Facebook. (Photo coutesy of GageSkidmore, modified by User:Cpro (Own work, modified from File:Twitter logo.svg) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons)
  • HuffPo tackles comment backlog

    HuffPo tackles comment backlog
    Huffington Post acquires Adaptive Semantics to help moderate the more than 100,000 comments posted to its site daily. (Photo coutesy of FatCow Web Hosting (http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons/) [CC-BY-3.0-us (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons)
  • HuffPo posts first annual profit

    HuffPo posts first annual profit
    Huffington Post execs report an annual profit of $30 million and say they hope to triple their sales gain in the coming years. (Photo courtesy of By FBI Buffalo Field Office (http://buffalo.fbi.gov/images/c3.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
  • AOL buys HuffPo

    AOL buys HuffPo
    AOL acquires Huffington Post for $315 million; Arianna Huffington takes charge of editorial content as president and editor-in-chief of Huffington Post Media Group. As of February 2011, the Huffington Post is ranked 31 for website traffic in the U.S. (Photo courtesy of FatCow Web Hosting (http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons/) [CC-BY-3.0-us (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons)