HuffPo's eponymous founder Arianna launched her UK experiment on Wednesday with an intimate and rather romantic portrait of her love for the UK: how she started and finished her first love affair here with journalist Bernard Levin, and how she fulfilled a teenage dream of studying at Cambridge. It's no secret that HuffPO's UK launch is arguably the most direct competition yet for the Guardian, as a tech-forward, left of centre news site with a significant overlap in audience. But what is HuffPo's true proposition, and how will it fit into a news market significantly different from its home turf in the US?
Editorially, HuffPo feels like a very traditional kind of threat and certainly doesn't feel like the future. Its formula relies on a fluency of established online skills (though admittedly ones traditional news organisations are still mystifyingly slow to deploy) such as comprehensive aggregation of news around a key story, live blogging and the obligatory social media bells and whistles. HuffPo's UK launch is one very much for the news junkies. HuffPo's cluttered design looks more dated than ever – moreDrudge than Flipboard. None of that seems groundbreaking, so what is the HuffPo's killer proposition?
Persuading celebrities and public figures to blog for free has been a success, but that ego-powered cheap editorial can only last as long as HuffPo's credibility. It's easy to forget, given how quiet things have been since the acquisition, that Huffington Post is no longer the radical, fast-moving, independent spirit of online news innovation, but is now asubsidiary of AOL. Huffington herself now splits her time between HuffPo and the rest of AOL's editorial properties as its editor-in-chief. How much cachet is there in writing for free for the company that is synonymous with both the dotcom crash, and subscription dial-up fees?
The fight for audience is slightly less intense online, where most readers rely on a range of sources. Advertising, for HuffPo's rivals, will be an area to watch; Huffpo could theoretically attract some big clients, but its presence and experience in the UK ad market could also help develop an appetite for more valuable ads on quality content.
Huffington's UK debut praises the UK media scene for the combination of innovation and traditional, powerful storytelling, which could just be a rather nice way of complementing someone before trying to steal their lunch. But some faster-moving competition without a legacy print business could be just the thing to drive on the UK online newspaper market.
Ultimately, at a time when news organisations are remodelling themselves as digital first – and the Guardian particularly – it will be the HuffPo's business model and how it adapts to the UK market that is of most interest. Revenues have been modest but in the black since last year – to an estimated $60m this year. If there's anything to be learned from the UK HuffPO, it will be the bottom line that's the bottom line.
Editorially, HuffPo feels like a very traditional kind of threat and certainly doesn't feel like the future. Its formula relies on a fluency of established online skills (though admittedly ones traditional news organisations are still mystifyingly slow to deploy) such as comprehensive aggregation of news around a key story, live blogging and the obligatory social media bells and whistles. HuffPo's UK launch is one very much for the news junkies. HuffPo's cluttered design looks more dated than ever – moreDrudge than Flipboard. None of that seems groundbreaking, so what is the HuffPo's killer proposition?
Persuading celebrities and public figures to blog for free has been a success, but that ego-powered cheap editorial can only last as long as HuffPo's credibility. It's easy to forget, given how quiet things have been since the acquisition, that Huffington Post is no longer the radical, fast-moving, independent spirit of online news innovation, but is now asubsidiary of AOL. Huffington herself now splits her time between HuffPo and the rest of AOL's editorial properties as its editor-in-chief. How much cachet is there in writing for free for the company that is synonymous with both the dotcom crash, and subscription dial-up fees?
Huffington's UK debut praises the UK media scene for the combination of innovation and traditional, powerful storytelling, which could just be a rather nice way of complementing someone before trying to steal their lunch. But some faster-moving competition without a legacy print business could be just the thing to drive on the UK online newspaper market.
Ultimately, at a time when news organisations are remodelling themselves as digital first – and the Guardian particularly – it will be the HuffPo's business model and how it adapts to the UK market that is of most interest. Revenues have been modest but in the black since last year – to an estimated $60m this year. If there's anything to be learned from the UK HuffPO, it will be the bottom line that's the bottom line.
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