As IF Times

link AOL INSIDER: Here Are 12 Reasons Why The AOL-Huffington Post Merger Is Going Down In Flames AOL.

Future business and culture students will be dissecting this for years.  In the annals of business combinations, this isn’t exactly merging chocolate with peanut butter.  As we have commented earlier,  http://asiftimes.com/2011/04/12/i-thought-we-were-friends/  the idea that AOL had to hitch their  name brand wagon, albeit a fading one,  to that of a cult graffiti blog was ill conceived at best and epic in stupidity at worst.   As this article seems to show, the only ones who couldn’t see this disaster coming was the guy running AOL, CEO Tim Armstrong.

Absent a bailout from government, this exercise will be a clinical demonstration of the mechanics of capitalism.  Someone comes up with a ‘brilliant’ idea, spends money to forward it and then, when it turns out to have no basis in business sense at all, collapses, or will collapse and everyone loses money.  That’s the way it is.  Of course, someone’s going to make some money out of this; someone always does.  There will be two conspicuous losers.  Obviously, the investors in the failed enterprise lose and secondly, the architect of the fiasco, Armstrong, who will likely have trouble convincing people that he can run a lemonade stand in the future.  Even now, his old business school is scrambling to take down any pictures and evidence of his attendance there and working on a public denial.  

Assuming there was a business model to be acquired beyond the siren call of Arianna Huffington’s annoying personality, the spending of over $300 million dollars of other people’s money must have accomplished something.  Turns out the simple answer is NOT.  Upon closer inspection,  the juvenile and crass scratchings of the Post scribers were not just part of the package, they WERE the package. Having a byline on the Post was the equivalent of flashing your breasts during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Discovering that the contributors to the Post had as much contempt and hatred for their fellow staffers as for sane people must have been a jolt however.   OH NO!!  Maybe Armstrong made the deal after the 4th martini during a 5 martini lunch when anything would have sounded reasonable.  I’m sure he now feels like the guy in the Vegas commercials who wakes up in the morning with tattoos and nipple rings on his body. 

Ironically, Arianna, despite her anti-capitalist and anti-American sensibilities has realized the quintessential American dream.  You can’t make this up.

link AOL and Huffington Post sued by unpaid bloggers | Reuters.

You knew this was coming, it was just a matter of time.  A few months back, America Online decided that the best way to spend their cash horde was to buy the far left wing graffiti, er I mean blog site, The Huffington Post for $315 million dollars.

Kudos to Arianna Huffington for being shrewd enough to create and promote her website as the repository for deranged ideologues.  The Post became the place to be seen for written opinions of the lefty persuasion and included scribblings from noted entertainment personalities which served to even more embellish the Post’s reputation.   For many bloggers who contributed to the opinions, having Huffington Post credentials conferred, to them at least, legitimacy, as if it were some kind of literary achievement.   In reality, most of the content could be found spray painted on the side of buildings as nonsensical diatribe.  The Post however gave voice and a stage to the raving ideologues.

Now that Arianna has gone mainstream, those same bloggers are clamoring for their share of the loot from AOL.  Good luck.  If their logic held any water, Hugh Hefner would have to share his profits with all the girls who had ever graced the pages of Playboy, since it can be argued it was their contributions that really drove the magazine.  These prototypical geeks writing pieces in their mother’s basement in their underwear may feel betrayed by Arianna, since they were supposed to be united against ‘the man’, ie the ‘establishment’.  Now it turns out, she is one of them.  So much for ideology and comrades in arms.

Bloggers write and pontificate on all sorts of things.  In general, nobody really cares unless you happen to have some previous notoriety from real life.  Then, you can spit out all kinds of flotsam and people will drink in your every word.  Think Charlie Sheen.  In America, it’s what sells, not what’s neccessarily good.  So the bottom line is, these shut out bloggers had better start writing something legitimate because their graffiti wall is gone.  Maybe it’s back to the spray can for most of them.