Opinion: AOL After the Honeymoon

From Jeff Bercovici, Mixed Media Blog at forbes.com

Jeff Bercovici

What happens when you mix the ambition of Arianna Huffington with the desperation of Tim Armstrong?

AOL shareholders will soon find out.

AOL Chairman Tim Armstrong seemed to find his ideal mate in Arianna Huffington. He needed someone to galvanize his drifting editorial division and give it a distinctive voice to woo readers and advertisers. She provided all that with The Huffington Post, one of the most successful publishing ventures of the last decade.

In just six years her site became one of the world’s top ten news destinations–and profitable, to boot. Armstrong, seeing a savior, was willing to spend $315 million for it in February and to make Huffington editor-in-chief of AOL’s 1,200-person newsroom. “Arianna represents what the future will look like for social news,” Armstrong said on CNN the day the deal was announced.

But Armstrong’s big coup could also be AOL’s eventual undoing. In hitching himself to Huffington, he has signed on to a mission and an agenda that go well beyond his mandate of re-creating value for shareholders.

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