(Updates with response from AOL to the prosecution in ninth paragraph).
April 12 (Bloomberg) - AOL Inc., seeking to boost sales growth after buying the Huffington Post, recruited as 800 full-time employees to press local operations across the country and reducing the use of freelancers.Arianna Huffington, co-founder of Huffington Post which becomes the editor of AOL media operations, said that she intends to increase the content of sites Web of Patch of the company covering approximately 800 local markets across the country. AOL may hire a journalist close to full-time by Patch site, although the final number has not been decided. "" Each site will now have its own team, "Huffington said in an interview. "It is always great and better to have a team." So far, content for each site Web Patch was produced by a single editor local full-time and freelance.Huffington, who joined AOL in 315 million deal Huffington Post completed last month, said that the Patch sites integrate also bloggers and comments. These social elements helped transform the model of news-aggregation Huffington Post in a Web site that has grown to attract the 25 million unique visitors per month in six years later. "" Basically, we will make a much more social Patch ", said Huffington, 60. "It is a great way to have people in the city, the Mayor of high-school kids, committed."Huffington said that she will appoint a new Executive editorial work on the initiative of social media in the coming days.National ExpansionAOL, spin-off of Time Warner Inc. in 2009, was reported sales of five quarters straight downward. After acquiring the Huffington Post to help increase the content online and boost ad revenue, AOL in March said that they pay up to 900 employees from its hand of work. Patch represents approximately 20% of AOL employee workforce based in New York, which totals 5, 000.Today, the Huffington Post and AOL were sued in New York claims that the content of the site authors are not paid for their work. The suit, brought by the writer Jonathan Tasini, seeks action collective, or a group, status. "The prosecution is totally without merit,"Mario Ruiz, a spokesman for the Huffington Post, said in a news release. "As we have said, our bloggers use our platform - and other unpaid Web - group blogs to connect and assist in their work to be seen by as many people as possible."AOL spent 18 cents to $19.98 at 4 p.m., today in the New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares lost 16 percent this year.Challenge MarketAOL, Director General Tim Armstrong has invested more than 50 million year last to jump start the expansion of Patch sites, which are designed to attract advertising local area businesses, like restaurants onlinehairdressing salons, florists and the car dealers.Armstrong has supported starting with 4.5 million in 2007, when he was at Google Inc. AOL bought the company in 2009, after he became CEO.The number of Patch sites exceeded only 800 and there is a future start of operations in Iowa and New Hampshire - the two States where the presidential election of 2012 will kick off, Huffington said. There are also two new sites in Newark, New Jersey, according to Janine Iamunno, a spokesman for Patch. Located 100 sites sites of stipulated Patch August, designed for communities with populations of 15 000 to 75 000, competition for advertising dollars from local blogs increased. Rivals include companies like Groupon Inc., the site of coupon that provides users with offers of the day, based on their geographical location. ' Dicey' comments Reader "we have seen many sites locally targeted very, very well done with local advertising and which comes to mind is Groupon," said Kip Cassino, Director of research at the Borrell Associates in Williamsburg, Virginia. Local online advertising market will be probably $ 15.8 billion in 2011, said. By 2015, it will increase to $ 24 billion, he said. "But a genuine question about the viability of the Patch model, he said in an interview. "Their idea is that you'll want to go to these sites, because you want to know what is on the menu of the school, or who is on the high school wrestling team." It is like the local newspaper. "And newspapers has always striven for advertisers in local".Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix.net, a company of hyper-local press jointly owned by Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and McClatchy Co. newspaper publishers, said that once the Patch sites introduce social forums and comments, it will be difficult to maintain a dialogue between the advertisers will be comfortable with users.Topix, which began in 2005 and 10 million dollars in sales, has about 5,000 local sites in communities where populations of 45 000 or less, Tolles said. Every day, the company manages approximately 1,000 complaints concerning the comments of the user, he said. "They will have a lot of heated comments and discussions at the local level,"Tolles said in an interview. "We have many comments on our sites which is dicey." "But then there is also stuff newspapers do not cover".-With the help of Donald Jeffrey in New York. Editors: Ville Heiskanen, Peter Elstrom
To contact the reporter on this story: Brett Pulley in New York at the bpulley@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom to pelstrom@bloomberg.net
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