AOL/Huffington Post

As a new media professional, I'm obviously excited any time a content property gets bought at a generous valuation and AOL paying $315 million for the Huffington Post's operation definitely seems to fit the bill.

Something I'll say on behalf of this idea is that it turns out that a few sites I read pretty frequently are already owned by AOL, under their AOL Tech banner, but I hadn't actually noticed that AOL owns them. Adding that kind of content to Huffington Post's more effective branding and marketing could easily add value. What's more, after I tweeted a joke about just now realizing that Mapquest still exists, I see that it has some pretty impressive functionality and a number of tech-savvy acquaintances are telling me it's worthy of support due to its use of the Open Street Map. So here, too, seems to be an asset with some hidden valuable that Arianna Huffington and her team could plausibly unlock.

At any rate, I continue to be an optimist about the Internet and the news.