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AOL, Yahoo and Disney all made big Digital Content moves in Q3 09. AOL and Yahoo, both under new leadership, clarified their positions as online content portals. Disney acquired Marvel, a hot content property with a lackluster online presence. All in all, Digital Content was conspicuously hot in our TechCrunch Q3 Report.

Tim Armstrong took over AOL at the end of Q1 09. Armstrong has consistently pushed AOL towards a rebirth as an online content portal. In Q2 AOL acquired Patch and Going, two local content startups. AOL continued in that vein in Q3 by buying MMAFighting.com. Beyond acquisitions, AOL has also been hiring writing talent fast enough to give print journalists hope for the future. At the end of July, AOL had 1,500 writers. Armstrong has also been flogging AOL’s new strategy. At the Mixx Conference on September 21, his keynote focused on how AOL will come to dominate online content.

AOL was not the only online giant to zone in on content. Yahoo, under new CEO Carol Bartz, also shifted its attention in that direciton. Yahoo’s biggest move towards online content was actually its move away from search. But Yahoo is not pointing towards traditional content — it’s focusing on social media, and Bartz said as much in May. In Q3, Yahoo fulfilled that commitment with its acquisitions of Maktoob and Xoopit. Maktoob is an Arabic web portal/social network and Xoopit organizes email in interesting ways. Both moves indicate that Yahoo envisions a future as a web portal with social features.

At the end of August, Disney acquired Marvel for $4 billion. Disney continues to make big strides into digital content and clearly plans to bring Marvel to the party. At the end of April 09 Disney bought into Hulu, putting much of its library on the video site. At the end of Q3, Disney announced  DisneyDigitalBooks, which put over 500 Disney books online. Expect Disney to integrate Marvel and its hot video library and comic book properties into the Hulu and DisneyDigitalBooks world. Steve Jobs is, of course, the biggest shareholder in Disney and with Apple’s tablet rumored to be on the way, it would not be surprising to see DisneyDigitalBooks and Marvel’s comics optimized to work with the device.  It would be more surprising if that did not happen.

All in all Q3 09 was a big quarter for digital content/media. Yahoo and AOL are committed to becoming internet portals. Both companies already boast impressive content and with the increased attention things should only get better. For its part , Disney added a lot of high quality content to its portfolio and continues to push content online in new ways. Print media may be struggling to survive the transition to an online world, and the companies that are already online are not doing anything to lessen their pain.