Eric Hippeau on the Huffington Post's Online Sharing Options

The Huffington Post, one of the first publishers to integrate Facebook Connect and the first to publish a Twitter edition, will soon integrate with LinkedIn, says the HuffPo's CEO Eric Hippeau in this video interview.

Eric Hippeau on the Huffington Post's Online Sharing Options Andy Plesser: What's been the impact of Facebook on Huffington Post? Eric Hippeau: Well, it’s what we call -- we call that social news so it’s the ability for our users to bring in their friends and followers and to share news together and to make comments etcetera. So that’s really kind of the online version of what people do offline which is talk about current events and news and follow news with groups of people. So we enable that on the Huffington Post and people could do that using Facebook. They cannot do it with using their Twitter account, using their Yahoo account, Google Buzz, and soon to come LinkedIn. And that’s been really phenomenal. It’s created an enormous of engagement and interest. And it’s also created a lot of interest on the part of the advertisers because the Huffington Post is one of the few sites that have scale where you have a combination of a social network and content. Andy Plesser: So what does that mean? Does it mean that a lot of the content is being consumed on Facebook off site? Is it sort of a more distributed model or how is it working out? Eric Hippeau: We allow people to share the content in any way that they want. If they want to share it on their Facebook and comment with their friends on their Facebook pages, that’s fine. If they want to do it on the Huffington Post and last month the Huffington Post published 2.5 million comments all moderated. So we have huge scale as far as engagement on the site itself. But we make it very easy for people to re-tweet. We make it very easy for people to do anything that they want with the content and do it in a very natural way. Andy Plesser: Alright, let’s talk about the advertising sign. I heard you speak some months ago saying the CPM are so dreadful they're nearing zero. How do you create revenue for the company, with having a post in this climate? Eric Hippeau: So I was referring to the network, the ad network revenues which have really a trend. I joined the company as full time, as CEO in June of last year and in July. In my first full months, I think the ad networks CPM were below a dollar yield to me as a publisher. So the way we build revenue is really the old fashion way. What I mean by that is that we were very fortunate to hire Greg Coleman as our Chief Revenue Officer and President. In turn, Greg has hired a very seasoned, experienced sales force. People who’ve had you know 10 years experience in digital. And we’re selling through relationship whereas selling by explaining what we do directly to our customers and that’s the old fashion way. Andy Plesser: Are there any problems selling against sort of political coverage? How do you deal with that or are there certain parts of the content that’s more attractive to advertisers? Eric Hippeau: I will say that less and less in the sense that people used of some advertisers and some big marketers were averse to a disaster, and plane crashers and all these. And we still have to be careful. No wants to advertise next to someone else’s catastrophe. However, there is so much going on the Huffington Post and we have so much activity and engagement and inventory that we can always find a very comfortable and very contextual place for people to advertise. Andy Plesser: What can we expect next? You guys have been launching a lot of verticals, local strategies or vertical strategy. Where might this with the editorial direction evolved? Eric Hippeau: Well we’re working on a number of things so you're right to say that we’ve been launching all new kinds of sections of verticals. Our next big ones coming out in July and that will be travel. And we’re very excited about it. We have a very travel oriented user- base, and every time that we have -- and with a very engaged audience that contributes pictures of best pictures and the best things they’ve done in tourism etcetera. So travel is going to be a very big section for us. Andy Plesser: Very good, well great to see you, Eric. Eric Hippeau: Thanks, Andy.