In the world of blogging, The Huffington Post reigns supreme as the most visited site around. It is far and away the #1 blog on the internet, and has held the position for over two years according to performance ranker Technorati. The site primarily offers political news and commentary, and tends to lean left in its political bent. Over the years it has developed into an online newspaper that has generated as much controversy as it has praise.
Co-creator and most visible member, Arianna Huffington
The site was launched in 2005 by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Joseph Peretti. The trio set out with the goal of creating a liberal counterpart to the Drudge Report, a conservative news site which had been experiencing great success. Since its launch, the “Huffpo” has eclipsed the Drudge Report by a substantial margin, generating nearly 3-times as much traffic.
The site is very well designed, and uses the TypePad service and Six Apart, a sort of internet marketing firm that uses social networking sites to further the reach of its clients. At the top of the blog is a menu system of categories not unike a newspaper, with different areas of news from business, technology, style, politics and opinion. The Digg, Twitter and their cousin programs are also featured just below the masthead.
The site prominently uses video to supplement its stories. They’ve invested in something called vlogging, short for video blogging. In this practice, contributors upload video and post it online. This is a rather revolutionary step, as they were the first major site to embrace the practice.
It works too. scrolling through the front page, your struck by how many images and videos are uploaded to the site. This is great in driving traffic. Visual cues abound and keep the reader engrossed. The comment boards are lively with discussion. It’s estimated that users make over 1 million comments per month.
But, any reader must take the Huffpo with a grain of salt. It is, after all, a politically biased organization. They are there as a device and branch of the Democratic Party, not as an impartial news organization. They are news, but not wholly accurate news. That being said, they are worthy of discussion due to the power they wield in the market.
Contributors to the site include Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Michael Moore and other prominent leftist politicians and advocates.
The Huffpo has grown extremely large and extremely powerful in a very short period of time. Now that they have achieved the megalithic status that they have, funding is pouring into the site. In 2008, they were awarded $15 million dollars to bolster their ‘reporting’ ranks and supplement their journalistic efforts. It appears that the Huffpo will remain the dominant player in the blogosphere.
