The Huffington Post had its largest audience ever this past Monday, due in part to its coverage of the Oscars. Social sharing gets some of the credit for the 13.3 million unique visitors that came to the site, which was recently identified by Newswhip research as one of the top three most viral news sources. The most shared stories were about the best- and worst-dressed at Hollywood’s annual awards ceremony.
Monday’s 111.2 million page views topped the previous best day, Feb. 13, the day after the Grammys and also the first weekday after Whitney Houston’s death. Stories about her and daughter Bobbi Kristina, who was taken to the hospital that same weekend, were “very big drivers” of traffic that day, said HuffPost spokesperson Mario Ruiz by email. Entertainment is “a large part of our traffic, but events like this also include lots of style coverage,” Ruiz said, “so a lot of sites benefit across HPMG: Moviefone, Stylelist, HuffPost Style, etc.” The business executive who oversees Moviefone and the other entertainment sites is leaving AOL, confirms Ruiz. Kerry Trainor has been with the company since spring of 2010.
