I don’t even like Arianna Huffington’s hair anymore
on February 16th, 2011She was way more attractive as a redhead. No, really that great do she had about ten years ago. Totally loved it. I almost did my hair just like that. I admired her. But now she has broken my heart.
Arianna Huffington, the rich lady who created the blog The Huffington Post with a team of investors and $1 million in seed money, said website content provided by a bunch of unpaid volunteer bloggers, has just sold the whole enchilada to AOL for a whopping $315 million.
Say, how’s that “Information Wants to be Free” thing working out for ya?
This is how it works, folks. Tech and freeloader gurus wind you up with pep talks about how they’re going to make you faaaaaaamous, while they get you to do all the labor. Then they make the bucks. And then they laugh at you. Ha ha.
Ka-ching! For me, the most telling part is that of the $315 million, Arianna and her investors only took $15 million in AOL stock. More an act of cashing out than digging in. But, hey, it’s a model and it’s working. And no-one is forced to write for free. If you can make a fortune off people’s vanity and desire to express themselves, why not?
Ow.
Debra Saunders at SF Gate:
Huffington is an entrepreneurial genius at self-promotion. She fiercely surfed the left’s discontent with mainstream – read: corporate – journalism by promising to keep mainstream – read: paid – news media “honest.”
Then she rode that left-wing discontent all the way to the bank. Now she writes like a corporate flack, lauding the “merger of visions” made possible after business-savvy CEO Eric Hippeau “monetized” the Huffington Post.
I’d write more, but I can’t afford to work for free for Ms Huffington, or even for me.
So, enjoy some LULZ.
And a little pep talk from Arianna Huffington herself!
I dunno about quoting Debra Saunders… for years we’ve called her the Poor Man’s Ann Coulter. I think Saunders blamed Ariana for turning her husband (Michael Huffington) gay and making him lose the Senate race to Diane Feinstein or something like that.
But yeah, there’s some really unhappy people over there at THP that are feeling like chumps right now. I guess THP stands for the sound you make when you stick your tongue out at people while yelling “SUCKERS!”
Yeesh, I’d never heard of Debra Saunders before, I don’t think.
I thought Stephen Colbert had the best response…he’s copied the front page of the THP site and put his own banner on top:
http://www.colbertnation.com/ColbuffingtonRe-post
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/374546/february-16-2011/tip-wag—colbuffington-re-post–repo-games—whale-fail?xrs=share_copy
BWWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! That is brilliant!
I read about this on NaturalNews.com, in the same article where they invited former Huff Post authors to publish there, especially their content which has been censored for the last few weeks by the Huff Post. No money promised except if they have an AdSense account, in which case they do get paid for ads that appear on their articles. They do get promised that their articles will have a lot of readers, because the site already does. I’ve been considering writing a few articles for them myself.