Silicon Roundabout

Huffington Post Set to Drastically Impact Our Lives, Launch UK Edition

Chuck Ansbacher | Friday 25 March, 2011 15:47

The Huffington Post’s success is perplexing. Launched in 2005 as a liberal answer to US aggregation sites like The Drudge Report, the only thing more confusing than it’s popularity is its editorial strategy. Stories are featured at random, with little consistency or clues as to why. They have a section devoted to pretty much everything — from sports to tech to divorce — none of which are comprehensive enough to satisfy more than a very casual reader’s interests.

And yet, it is the #1 blog on the internet.

It would take an idiot to question the Huffington Posts’s content strategy — mostly because its success has been astronomical and unparalleled. When was the last time something you made got bought for $315 million? The fact that it’s happened with a relatively minimal amount of original content being created is all the more impressive. Or enraging, depending on how you look at things.

And this summer, with a UK version of the site just announced, you’ll be able to be impressed or enraged depending on how you look at things in a whole new way. What to expect from the British edition? Probably the exact same thing you get with the US edition — an incoherent editorial strategy coupled with insightful news commentary from people almost always have no right whatsoever to be commenting on the news — otherwise known as the future of content on the internet. Yay.

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