While some continue to think it doesn't make sense, it's overpriced or whatever, I like Jeff Jarvis analysis of the deal.

M&A is about acquiring something you can not create... and paying a premium for that.

What AOL got is a deep understanding of the new media models that work. "What HuffPo and Arianna bring is a new cultural understanding of media that is built around the value of curation, the power of peers, the link economy, passion as an asset, and celebrity as a currency." The curation route and by the way not on the SEO-route of "making content for search" which more and more seems to me like a dead-end for media companies.

A lot of traditional media are still struggling to get beyond the "outmoded" model where "content must be something that is created only by content companies that pay content people to create it". As Jarvis puts it, "Content is no longer scarce, people. It is abundant. Google understands that. Twitter understands that. Huffington Post understands that. Sadly, old content people from old content companies still do not. Therein lies a lesson in this acquisition."

Even though curations still requires the need/desire to express yourself - which not everyone has - I think it can actually go much further than blogging.

My answer as to why, on Quora.

Interesting read showing SEO and Content Curation can mix well.

The take away is that you need content to do well in SEO. Curating content makes it easy for you to publish sufficient content. If you ensure that your content is relevant and useful to your audience, you will be perceived as a thought leader allowing you to do well with your overall SEO objectives.

"algorithm-aided human writing will meet human-aided algorithmic curation; quality will rise."

An old post but still very enlighting to understand the dialectic between the Human Web and the algorithmic one.