AOL is pushing hard in the news sector, first by purchasing Huffington Post for $315 million and now by adding a new company to their Patch blog network roster, this time a startup called Outside.in.

Backed by the likes of CNN, Milestone Venture Partners, Betaworks and Union Square Ventures, Outside.in is a local news aggregator which will be added to Patch’s network of more than 800 local blogs.

It’s still unclear how AOL will choose to use Outside.in. The company could be used to feed local news to already existing blogs or it could remain as a hyper-local geographically based properly of it’s own. Then again with the number of “talent buys” these days, the move could be viewed as a more strategic means of bringing in top aggregation talent. [Read more…]