You know what that means — it’s time for some wild speculation! Who will be the big buyer?

You’ve probably already heard about possible buyers like Warren Buffett (not happening) and Rubert Murdoch’s News Corp (maybe). But what about all the brands that salivate over CONTENT like it will lead them to the land of milk, honey and ROI? Is it time for a brand to swoop in and become a true publisher and media baron?

Probably not. But that won’t stop us from imagining a few brands that could make the big move.

Groupon

Groupon’s board just fired Founder and CEO Andrew Mason, so anything is possible. After all, Groupon is a pretty crazy place — remember when Mason brought a pony to the Groupon office to give to Michael Bloomberg?

For years, hyper-local advocates have been trying to find the perfect way to marry daily deals with local newspapers. The Tribune papers could help Groupon conquer the deals market in LA and Chicago, the second and third biggest cities in the US, respectively.

Just wait for the uproar when the Groupon Tribune pairs their Immigration Reform coverage with deals on tacos and tequila.

Google

At some point, will Google want Google News to become Google News? Google launching its own newspaper would likely invite some antitrust lawsuits, but Yahoo gets away with promoting Yahoo content, and Google successfully escaped its last antitrust suit.

With $48 billion in cash on hand, Google could take a flyer on buying the Tribune, even if it doesn’t make much sense. Heck, if anyone can save the newspaper industry, it’s probably Google. Or Arianna Huffington and Nick Denton’s unborn, test-tube love child.

(Hyper-alliance procreation is going to be all the rage in five years. Trust me.)

AOL

AOL purchased Patch, a hyper-local news network, in 2009; by 2011, they were reportedly losing $100 million a year on it. Point is: AOL is totally willing to throw a ton of money on publishing experiments.

If properly structured, there’s a chance the Tribune Papers could help save Patch, which is finally attaining profitability in some regions. Think of the Tribune Papers as the Downton Abbey manor, and the surrounding Patch papers as the sprawling village. Arianna could make guest appearances as Lady Grantham. It’d be freaking awesome!

Red Bull

Red Bull is the gold standard of brand publishers—“a publishing empire that also happens to sell a beverage.”

Red Bull built their publishing empire by owning the extreme sports world, from skateboarding to surfing to, most famously, a dude jumping from space. So what if Red Bull, in their brand-publishing glory, bought the Tribune papers? EXTREME sequester negotiations! EPIC wedding announcements! WILD Sunday profiles!

Bungee-jumping off the Tribune Building. Skate ramps in pressrooms. Rahm Emanuel would love it. Just Imagine the headline possibilities: ‘F*ck Yeah!’: Chicago Mayor Pulls Off 1080 While Dressed as a Pirate During Briefing.

Now that’s a journalism world I want to live in.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The Huffington Post is a social media beast. The “internet newspaper” has 657,000 Facebook fans, nearly 2 million Twitter followers and a commentary rate that can rival total page views on other news sites.

Additionally with HuffPost Live 321 — a live streaming video network featuring community contributors that’s set to launch later this month — social media will become an editorial product itself.

Launched in 2005, Arianna Huffington’s namesake publication has lots of balls in the air and requires an entire social media team as well as open-minded strategy to keep them going.

“It’s a lot to deal with,” Dean Praetorius, HuffPo’s senior editor of trends and social media, said regarding the site’s more than 50 vertical accounts, covering subjects as oppositional as weddings and divorce and as far-reaching as politics and entertainment.

The editors for these sections create their own social media posts, which HuffPo’s social media team can then choose to use for the website’s main accounts, which have the capability of catapulting content to devices across the world.

“We are very well aware that our main feeds can be launching pads for viral content,” said Praetorius, 24, a Boston College graduate in communications.

Viral posts, in turn, drive more traffic to the website. Whether something will reach that level of popularity, however, largely depends on its content, Praetorius said.

“It can be everything from a great blog post people don’t expect to something that gets people having a conversation about the news,” he said. “Some of our most viral posts are the most commented as well.”

HuffPo employs 486 people, including a social team of seven, a community team of six plus 30 moderators and more than 300 in editorial, and manages 30,000 unpaid bloggers (10,000 of which have posted in the last 90 days).

HuffPo relies heavily on analytics to determine its social media strategy. Using Bit.ly data as well as its own, HuffPo determined that user interaction with its tweets plateaus around the five-minute mark, so that’s how frequently the main account posts on Twitter.

That’s a lot of tweets, but Praetorius, who oversees strategic projects in social media, said they’re not “stepping on our own toes.”

“We know we’re not losing followers as a result of how much we tweet,” he said. “We’re not tweeting so often that people aren’t engaging with our tweets.”

Indeed, retweets and Facebook shares of HuffPo content consistently number in the hundreds, which drives traffic but also creates a sense of community for readers.

“At the end of the day, traffic is a concern but it isn’t the only concern,” Praetorius said. HuffPo uses its comments to shape future social media strategy.

“We always do care about the commenters and what they care about,” Praetorius said. “So when suggestions come in through Facebook and Twitter, we look at what they are, not just for timeliness but what will engage our audience.”

Cultivating a strong comments community requires upkeep. HuffPo uses Julia, a word analysis program, to flag abusive comments and prevents trolls from creating an atmosphere that stifles discussion. According to Praetorius, HuffPo’s vibrant commentary community also polices itself.  As proof, he said, HuffPo doesn’t frequently delete comments.

The web news giant has an equally hands-off approach to social media policy: It doesn’t really have one. Instead, Praetorius said HuffPo judges social media on a case-by-case basis and encourages “good judgement,” “creativity” and alternatives to straight news headlines to promote user engagement.

“We’re not keeping people from having opinions or a conversation,” he said. “We don’t want things to end with just putting out a link.”

This means HuffPo posts are provocative — usually an interesting quote, a perplexing query or a juicy bit of information — and are meant to drive page views and conversation.

And if you’ve ever seen a HuffPo comment thread, you’ll know reading the article is only the beginning of a discussion.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The network will be broadcasted 12 hours a day on the weekdays “with highlights after hours and on weekends,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s Keach Hagey. It will be staffed by 100 news professionals from outlets like CNN, ABC, and al-Jazeera English, and feature conversations and commentary from “the community of people who have left nearly 200 million comments on the site over the past seven years.”

In a letter to readers, Arianna Huffington said that the Live stream will include a dialogue with fans of the site.

“People are tired of being talked at; they want to be talked with,” she said. “The news is no longer about a few people telling everyone else what happened — it’s about everyone telling everyone what’s happening right now.”

A site, HuffPost Live 3, 2, 1 was launched in preparation for the premiere. The blog’s commenters and fans have a chance to audition to be on the show by “recording a video sounding off on what you are passionate about, what ticks you off, or what topics you’d like to see us cover,” Huffington said. “The most engaging submissions will be posted on the ’3, 2, 1…’ page — and those who left them will be invited to become regular guests on HuffPost Live.”

“We’re not trying to report the news,” said Roy Sekoff, a founding editor of the blog who is leading HuffPost Live, in an interview with the Journal. “We are trying to have conversations that the news inspires.”

By tapping into its network of opinionated commenters, HuffPost is following the rule of finding the right crowd. These are people that want a platform for their voices to heard, which HuffPost Live will provide, even more so than the comments section.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently