Huffington Post to follow up AOL deal with launch of British edition

The Huffington Post will launch a British edition this Summer its co-founder Arianna Huffington said yesterday.

Huffington said that the news and comment blog site she launched would start to roll-out international editions and that the British version would initially feature a localised home page and more UK content.

The Huffington Post was acquired by web giant AOL in a $315m deal last month, Huffington told the Guardian Changing Media Summit yesterday that on of the reasons she sold the business was to allow its international expansion.

A Canadian version is also in the pipeline and prior to the sale to AOL, the Huffington Post already had plans in place to expand to French and Brazilian readers.

“The Huffington Post is a very strong global brand on the internet. It is huge in America, it has one million users in the UK, one million users in Canada. We are looking at a brand that is going to explode from a brand and usage standpoint,” the Telegraph reported Huffington telling the conference.

AOL hired around 1,200 journalists last year, with around 100 in the UK already, some of who were likely to contribute to the new site.

However, the FT noted that AOL recently announced the departure of around 900 staff as part of a restructuring around the Huffington Post deal, which is already seeing content from the two companies being used on both sites.