More on the Huffington Post at 5 years Old

The Huffington Post has recorded impressive growth in the last couple of years. Figures from ComScore show the site as having 12.3 million unique visitors per month, trailing the New York Times by just a few hundred thousand. Other online measurement firms show different numbers, but the same general trend. Compete shows the Post gaining on the Times, while Quantcast shows it ahead of NYT. At its current pace, the Huffington Post will surpass the Times in online traffic in 2012. However, that current pace almost certainly will not be sustained if the Times erects the pay wall (subscription service) that it has promised to do in 2011. Pay walls may or may not end up generating more revenue for the publishers that erect them, but they always cut into the traffic on the site in question.