• TechCrunch, Monday, June 22, 2009 12:45 PM

PoliticsDaily, AOL's new political news and commentary site, in May surpassed rival Politico.com in unique visits, after being launched only a month ago. "This is a big deal for AOL and representative of the company's ambitions to become a dominant player in the online content space," says TechCrunch's Leena Rao. PoliticsDaily is part of AOL's new MediaGlow division, which is focused on building content brands distinct from AOL. Engadget and TMZ.com are two other successful examples.

"AOL may be on to something," says Rao, noting that MediaGlow's sites rose 5% year over year, with unique visitors totaling 76.3 million. Michael Arrington, another TechCrunch writer, has said in the past that MediaGlow "is looking to pick up the remnants of the dying print magazine business and digitize this content." As the print business falters, "a lot of high quality talent is suddenly willing to take a job in online, even at a much lower salary," says Rao. "And AOL has some cash from the dialup business."

PoliticsDaily still has a long way to go before it surpasses more popular sites like The Huffington Post, which saw 5.3 million unique visitors in May. However, HuffPo is more of a content aggregator, while PoliticsDaily is more focused on long form original content. "It seems that PoliticsDaily is still growing and may be a model for where magazines should head in the future," says Rao.

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