Arianna Huffington, chairwoman, president, and editor in chief of the Huffington Post, will be these things no longer. “I fully expected to be able to continue leading HuffPost while also building Thrive Global,” Huffington tells the New York Times today, “But it became clear that this was an illusion as Thrive went from an idea to a reality, with investors, staff and offices.” Here, Huffington is referring to a wellness startup named for her book Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder. A fearless advocate for wellness, Huffington is now fighting for controversial causes like a good night's rest, as she does in her book The Sleep Revolution. “One of the Thrive principles is knowing when it’s time for a new chapter to begin, and for me that time has arrived,” Huffington said.
While that's one real and also expedient explanation, another, as tendered by Recode and surely others, has to do with a crowding of the Huffington Post and a potentially forced change of her role there. As was announced at the end of July, Verizon bought Yahoo for $5 million. Yahoo's media tendencies might clash with another Verizon-owned media company, The Huffington Post.
More precisely, the hierarchy is this: The Huffington Post was sold to AOL five years ago, and then Verizon bought AOL last year. Now, with Verizon absorbing Yahoo, there's a little too much media at the company, and perhaps not enough love to go around. "It was pretty clear that in Yahoo/AOL, she wouldn’t have the same position that she has now," or so an anonymous source tells Recode.
So now Ms. Huffington will turn her attentions to Thrive Global, a "corporate and consumer well-being and productivity platform" with $7 million in funding and a $33 million valuation. As Business Insider notes, the company plans to focus on "curated commerce" focused on wellness "think pillows, candles, and food supplements."
You know, with that kind of money, it can't be terribly hard to sleep at night.
Previously: Sunday Morning Coming Down: Verizon Buys Yahoo For $5 Billion