In two and half years, the Huffington Post has risen to its founders’ expectations. It now counts 43 full-time employees and 1,800 bloggers (including some well-known names).

According to USA Today and Technorati, the Huff Post is the fifth-most-linked-to blog on the Internet. The Post is supposed to become profitable by next year, and its audience could potentially double as US readers prepare for the 2008 elections.

The Post remains a politics-oriented news site, with a strong anti-war stance, but its founder Arianna Huffington plans on transforming it into an all-purpose digital newspaper.

According to her, she would love to have more conservative voices represented - even former White House aide Karl Rove.

Newspapers better closely watch the evolution of the Huffington Post, which is starting to take the shape of the next generation of online newspapers.

"People are looking for places that pull together the best information into one place," Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr tells USA Today. "This gives them a focused way to get it."

“Traditional newspaper sites, he says, link to stories on their front pages by their reporters or wire services, but rarely to those of rival organizations,” reported USA Today.

“Traditional newspapers, if they are going to survive, need to follow Huffington's model, he says: "If they don't point them to interesting stories that are elsewhere, Arianna will."

Source: paidcontent.org – USA Today