Inside the merger with AOL

When Kenny Lerer and I launched The Huffington Post on May 9, 2005, we would have been hard-pressed to imagine this moment. The Huffington Post has been growing at a prodigious rate. But my New Year's resolution for 2011 was to take HuffPost to the next level -- not just incrementally, but exponentially.

At the first meeting of our senior team this year, I laid out the five areas on which I wanted us to double down: major expansion of local sections; the launch of international Huffington Post sections; more emphasis on the growing importance of service in our lives; much more original video; and additional sections that would fill in some of the gaps in what we are offering our readers.

Around the same time, I got an e-mail from Tim Armstrong (AOL chairman and CEO), saying he had something he wanted to discuss with me, and asking when we could meet. We arranged to have lunch at my home in Los Angeles later that week. The day before the lunch, Tim e-mailed and asked if it would be OK if he brought Artie Minson, AOL's chief financial officer, with him. I told him of course and asked if there was anything they didn't eat. "I'll eat anything but mushrooms," he said.

The next day, he and Artie arrived, and, before the first course was served -- with an energy and enthusiasm I'd soon come to know is his default operating position -- Tim said he wanted to buy The Huffington Post and put all of AOL's content under a newly formed Huffington Post Media Group with me as its president and editor-in-chief.

I flashed back to Nov. 10, 2010. That was the day that I heard Tim speak at the Quadrangle conference in New York. He was part of a panel on "Digital Darwinism," along with Michael Eisner and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.

At some point during the discussion while Tim was talking about his plans for turning AOL around, he said that the challenge lay in the fact that AOL had off-the-charts brand awareness, and off-the-charts user trust and loyalty, but almost no brand identity. I was immediately struck by his clear-eyed assessment of his company's strengths and weaknesses, and his willingness to be so up front about them.

As HuffPost grew, Kenny and I had both been obsessed with what Professor Clayton Christensen has famously called "the innovator's dilemma." In his book of the same name, Christensen explains how even very successful companies, with very capable personnel, often fail because they tend to stick too closely to the strategies that made them successful in the first place, leaving them vulnerable to changing conditions and new realities. They miss major opportunities because they are unwilling to disrupt their own game.

After that November panel, Tim and I chatted briefly and arranged to see each other the next day. At that meeting, we talked not just about what our two companies were doing, but about the larger trends we saw happening online and in our world. I laid out my vision for the expansion of The Huffington Post, and he laid out his vision for AOL. We were practically finishing each other's sentences.

Two months later, we were having lunch in LA and Tim was demonstrating that he understood the innovator's dilemma and was willing to disrupt the present to, if I may borrow a phrase, "win the future." (I guess that makes this AOL's -- and HuffPost's -- Sputnik Moment!)

There were many more meetings, back-and-forth e-mails and phone calls about what our merger would mean for the two companies. Things moved very quickly. A term sheet was produced, due diligence began and on Super Bowl Sunday the deal was signed.

By combining HuffPost with AOL's network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus and international reach, we know we'll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform.

Remember my New Year's resolution? It's coming true -- and it's only the beginning of February. Let's go down the checklist: Local? AOL's Patch.com covers 800 towns across America, providing an incredible infrastructure for citizen journalism in time for the 2012 election, and a focus on community and local solutions that have been an integral part of HuffPost's DNA. Check.

Original video? AOL's just finished building a pair of state-of-the-art video studios in New York and LA, and video views on AOL have gone up 400 percent over the last year. Check. More sections? AutoBlog, Music, AOL Latino, Black Voices, etc, etc, etc. fill gaps in HuffPost's coverage. Add all that to what HuffPost is doing with social, community, mobile, as well as our commitment to innovative original reporting and beyond-left-and-right commentary, and the blending will have a multiplier effect.

Far from changing our editorial approach, our culture, or our mission, this moment will be for HuffPost like stepping off a fast-moving train and onto a supersonic jet. We're still traveling toward the same destination with the same people at the wheel and with the same goals, but we're now going to get there much, much faster.

We can't wait to begin the ride.

 Arianna Huffington, a Tribune Media Services columnist, is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, which she sold to AOL on Feb. 6 for $315 million. Huffington will take control of AOL editorial content as editor in chief of the new Huffington Post Media Group.