AOL MediaGlow's strategy snags talent, content from beleagured mag businesses

Not bad for what had been considered a dinosaur. AOL, which was recently cut loose by parent Time Inc. and has been dismissed by many commentators as so yesterday (having been one of the original online service providers) has scored some major success with its new political news and blog site PoliticsDaily.com. According to a post by Techcrunch, the site -- which was only launched a month and a half ago -- has surpassed rival Politico.com in tracked unique visitors.

According to May’s comScore results, PoliticsDaily.com received 2.4 million unique visitors compared to 1.1 million unique visitors on Politico.com in May.

PoliticsDaily unique selling proposition is that it primarily focuses on in-depth political commentary as opposed to breaking news and provides only original content, from long-form analysis to blog posts on issues in the U.S. political landscape.

AOL's MediaGlow division is building new content brands distinct from AOL itself and recently launched topic directory Love.com, Engadget and TMZ.com, among other properties. The technology side saw the most growth out of all the MediaGlow networks, seeing 35 percent growth in year over year, compared with a 5% growth for sites in general.

As TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington wrote earlier this month, the MediaGlow team is looking to pick up the remnants of the dying print magazine business and digitize this content. With the print business in shambles, a lot of high quality talent is suddenly willing to take a job in online, even at a much lower salary.

AOL’s strategy seems to be creating or inserting new brands at little marginal operating cost. If the brand tanks, then AOL isn’t losing too much, says Techcrunch.