Can you think of anything crazier than launching a new website in 2008 without a blog? Leave it to Tom Cruise's web team to do just that. Last week the people that work for Tom Cruise (scientologists and hollywood pr experts) were busy buying up Google Adwords across the Internet to promote his new website at TomCruise.com.
ITEM: Tom Cruise is buying Google Adwords. His Scientology handlers must be working on his SEO optimization; type in "Tom Cruise" in Google Search - and his paid sponsored ads pop up at the top of the search results. It directs surfers to a new official TomCruise.com launching soon... Some of the google ads say "Get the real scoop from Tom Cruise. Stay Tuned For Official Site Launch" "The Countdown is On. TomCruise.com launches May 5th. Get the scoop!" and "The Official Site Launches Soon. You'll Never Guess What's Coming!"
Tom Cruise is clearly looking for an image makeover with this new website and the recent appearance with Oprah. The new website, which launched today, contains photos, biography, filmography as well as trailers from 27 Tom Cruise films. The site celebrates Tom Cruise's twenty-five years in the movie business.
The sad thing about this exciting new website is there isn't a blog which would have made the website much more interesting. Instead, there is a "Message From Tom" section which is similar to what other stars like Britney Spears have on their websites. The message was created in Flash. Tom Cruise's message basically says that he really enjoys making movies and he hopes to bring us yet more excellent movies. It would have been useful if bloggers could have linked people directly to this message but they can't because Tom Cruise's webmasters think Flash is more important than function.
Gawker reports that the PageSix.com gossip blog that was spun off from the New York Post's Page Six column has been shut down. The site now redirects to the Post's gossip column.
During the last internet bubble, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation used its Page Six brand to launch a new entertainment website, Pagesix.com. The property has had an even shorter life this cycle: Pagesix.com, which was largely independent of the newspaper's Page Six print column, is being shuttered immediately; it had been live only since December. The URL already redirects to the New York Post's main website, and the site's staff have had their access to email cut off. Managing Editor, David Boyle, told the site's Los Angeles staff. "Given the difficulty in the economy, it was not the right time for this launch," said Jennifer Jehn, one of the site's managers. A total of 18 editorial and support staffers will be let go and three reassigned within the New York Post.
Gawker also says the website had a day last week with over 1 million pageviews thanks to photos of Eliot Spitzer's hooker Ashley Alexandra Dupre. The site appeared to garnering a fair amount of inbound links. Technorati shows about 700 inbound links for the blog's 3-month run. But Technorati rankings are a trivial matter to a powerful media mogul like Rupert Murdoch, especially when he sees an ad spend decline on the horizon.
Murdoch, disclosing a slowdown in ad revenue at his Fox television stations and newspapers, has predicted a "temporary downturn for a year or so." Other media companies, such as the New York Times, are also suffering from the advertising downturn, and have cut costs by making piecemeal layoffs.
And so the PageSix.com site is dead and owners of competing gossip blogs can breathe a little easier - at least until Murdoch relaunches the site during the next Internet bubble.
By now everyone has heard that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught in a prostitution sting. The New York Timesreports that the prostitute Spitzer was having the secret rendezvous with is 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupre. In addition to being a hooker, Ashley is also a wannabee singer and as nearly all 20-somethings do these days she has a MySpace page. The MySpace page includes a single from one of her songs called "What We Want." There is also a blog on her MySpace page. She has not been a very dedicated blogger. Her blog contains just one entry over a priod of several months. Ironically she offers some relationship advice in her only post.
If you are in a relationship, and it is "doing absolutly nothing" for you, makes you feel bad about yourself or situations, just causing unessesary drama, and ruining things that you may actually care about...why would you want that in your life?? you need to surround yourself with the people that make you feel good, and that will help you get to that next step in your life. that is what a relationship is all about...growing and moving forward.
Surround yourself around people that are making moves, and doing what "they want and love" with their lives, positive energy...thats what life is all about...living. Because if you dont, misery loves company, they will only try to bring you down with them...but the question is, are you strong enough, to not let that happen?
Its hard to see if you let it get to that point...
...and then from all those answers you have to decide if that person is worthy of being a part of "your" life....because it is your life, your show...you decide who you want the characters to be...not the other way around. Every person is different, every person has their voice...can you recognize your voice, listen to it, and stick up for it??
A shadowy group of Internet hackers called Anonymous released a video declaring war on Scientology. The video says they will destroy Scientology.
Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind--for the laughs--we shall expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form. We acknowledge you as a serious opponent, and we are prepared for a long, long campaign. You will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell.
Anonymous also started a DDOS attack on the Scientology website. Wired's Threat Level notes that at first Anonymous inadvertently took down the website of a school in the Netherlands.
One of the moderators on 711chan.org thought he had learned from a friend what the real server's address was on Friday.
The user, who was using the handle Splongcat, uploaded DDOS software configured with the supposedly secret address and urged others in an internet chat room to download and run the software. The software was intended to flood the specified IP address with rogue traffic in order to bring the server down.
But within minutes, users began complaining the software was crashing and others analyzed the traffic and found that the IP address didn't belong to the Church of Scientology, reporting that that the software was actually targeting a school in the Netherlands.
Immediately the IRC chat room hosted on 711chan.org (currently down) was filled with calls to stop using the program, and the 900 people in the chat room returned to their disorderly conversation about whether they should be flooding Digg with anti-Scientology links or making harassing phone calls to local Scientology branches.
A story about the Anonymous attack on eNews2.0 says the attacks were powerful enough to force Scientology to move its website to a server hosted by Prolexic Technologies. Prolexic is a company that offers protection from these types of DDoS attacks.
Anonymous generated a powerful attack against Scientology.org, which was hit with several DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks over the past few days. According to Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer with Arbor Networks, a company compiling data on Internet attacks, it seems that Anonymous' attacks flooded the Church of Scientology's web site with as much as 220 Mbps of traffic, which indicates that the group itself is based on some sort of organization.
However, shortly after these attacks, the Church seems to have moved its web site to a server hosted by Prolexic Technologies, a company specialized in protecting other companies from DDOS attacks.
Anonymous has been posting videos to a YouTube site called Chanology Project. The videos include Scientology clips about Tom Cruise and about Scientology's negative views on psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. The YouTube site also contains clips of media coverage of their DDOS attacks. The LolCruise picture below was shown in this video from Anonymous about the Scientology site being down. Anonymous is connected to the origin of the LOLCat meme going back to its first mention on
4chan.org in 2005. For more information on 4chan.org and the LOLCats see here,
here and here.
The New York Post extended its popular gossip news brand "Page Six" onto the web earlier this month with a new blog at PageSix.com. The site features a frequently updated blog, photos, videos and as the Daily Intelligencer notes Gawker-like stalker maps.
"Page Six" has made a new move in its aggressive push to take over the world and make it canoodley. They've launched the new version of PageSix.com! The site is slick, a little bit more glamorous, and a lot more bloggy. They've got feeds from other gossip sites, a running blog (which, so far, seems to have mostly party pictures and items from the print version of the column), and even Gawker Stalker Maps.
The blog is run by a team of six bloggers known as the Sixers. The blog has been popular already - it already has nearly 1,000 inbound links according to Technorati. The new PageSix.com site is seperate from the other New York Post content. The regular Page Six column by Richard Johnson continues on the New York Post.
Singer Alanis Morissette has started vlogging on her YouTube channel. She answers questions in a video interview while she's taking a walk. Some of the younger stars who established YouTube sites early on now have tens of thousands of subscribers. Ashley Tisdale of High School Musical fame has over 60,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel. Alanis just has a couple hundred so far so she has a ways to go to catch the YouTube early birds.
In Alanis' first video blog she talks about her upcoming tour and her next album. She also says she is working on a book. Watch out for that tree Alanis.
Now that Elisabeth Hasselbeck's new baby Taylor Thomas Hasselbeck is here (congrats Elisabeth!) will she keep blogging? She kept fans up-to-date with a few posts before her baby was born on her blog called Elisabeth's Baby Blog. The blog lives on Dreft.com, which is a Procter & Gamble website. Here's an excerpt from her most recent post.
Still no sign of baby #2 yet! I am having some contractions at night that make me think it may happen soon! I have been having a hard time getting out of bed… especially because I get up at least 4 times, either for the bathroom, or for Grace…
One would assume that any baby blogging deal she cut with Procter & Gamble would have her continue blogging once the baby arrived. According to E Online she will be back. E Online also wonders if she is blogging out of a desire to compete with Rosie O'Donnell.
Perhaps driven to compete with former View cohost Rosie O'Donnell (long famed for her haiku-riffic stream-of-consciousness bloggery), Elisabeth promises "12 personal stories recounting her experiences and emotions both before and after the birth of her second child, due later this month, along with photos of the new baby."
If the blog was on Elisabeth's personal website or on a blogging service like Blogger than maybe we could buy E Online's suggestion that she is trying to compete with Rosie but since the blog is on the Dreft detergent website it is much more likely that it was a financial deal. We would love to know how much The View co-star was paid for baby blogging but that information is not readily available.
PaidContent reports that CBS has bought a relatively unknown celebrity blog called Dotspotter for about $10 million. That's right. $10 million! For Dotspotter!
CBS (NYSE: CBS) has bought 10-month-old celebrity gossip blog Dotspotter, for a price of around $10 million. The rumor was first reported on Valleywag, and has also been confirmed to us by sources.
The site, based in San Francisco, was co-founded by CEO Anthony Soohoo, who is a former VP from Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). Also read this background post from B2.0 on Dotspotter.
The price seems pretty high for a sector which is saturated with more high profile celebrity blogs/sites like TMZ.com, PerezHilton, and others...and, of course, the fact that the site was only launched mid-January this year. But one source close to the situation told us the price is not for the site itself, but the team that has built it...that may also mean there’s a heavy earn-out component, possibly. Would be interesting to see if the site lasts as a standalone brand.
Dotspotter doesn't appear to have the traffic to justify the $10 million purchase price - about 300,000 montly pageviews according to this post citing stats from Complete.com - that's $35 per pair of eyeballs. They also don't appear to have the inbound links to justify the $10 million acquisition - they have just over 330 inbound links according to Technorati but some of those have occurred over the last couple days after news about this acquisition broke.
Other blogs and bloggers are also questioning what CBS paid for this site including Profy and Mathew Ingram. The Last Podcast defends the site and says it has rapidly growing traffic. Bloggers are also reminding everyone that CBS also recently bought Wallstrip and last.fm. If you own a blog, vlog or social network selling it to CBS looks like a profitable endeavor - at least while they are trying to figure out what sticks.
To be fair Dotspotter does have a few extra features that make it more than just a regular celebrity gossip blog such as the celebrity ranker and celebrity sightings. But it still seems like a high price tag. There are many celebrity blogs out there that currently have a much bigger following than Dotspotter does.
Rapper, producer and songwriter Kanye West has started a blog on his Kanye University website. Most of his blog entries are posts of YouTube videos with a short comment. Some of his posts are videos of his songs, clips from media coverage or photos from his travels. Kanye has also discussed shoes, robots, pool parties, fashion, De La Soul and educaton. He also covers offbeat subjects including a post about a lady who falls while trying to make grapes.
It looks like the first post here was made on 8-27-07 but Kanye has picked up the pace since then. TMZ commented on Kanye's posting frequency and calls him "a regular Michael Crichton."
The hip hop artist swore off MTV after losing out yet again at the channel's Music Video Awards, and since then, he's been working overtime to post on his site. Yesterday alone, Kanye posted five times. He's a regular Michael Crichton.
What's Kanye blogging about? Everything from his fave YouTube clips (he's a big fan of Feist and Brit indie band Bat for Lashes), to his favorite sneakers. But Kanye's favorite subject? Himself, of course. The blog is chock full of pics, videos and news clips confirming Kanye as "the king of rap."
Kanye also posted a YouTube video clip of his recent skit on SNL where he poked fun at himself. Kanye clearly had the best pumpkin. Kanye's been pretty active on the Internet lately. A couple weeks ago he was helping MySpace select featured artists.
Chris Crocker quickly became one of the most well-known YouTubers when his Leave Britney Alone video hit the mainstream. Crocker's video defense of Britney's troubled performance at the VMAs has received over 8 million views. It was so popular that it was even parodied by actor Seth Green. Now Variety is reporting that Crocker has signed a deal with 44 Blue Productions that could result in Crocker's own tv show. CNET's The Social blog says Crocker was on 44 Blue's radar before his popular Britney video.
But don't hold your breath. That impassioned young fellow is Chris Crocker, a 19-year-old from Tennessee whose 15 minutes (seconds?) of fame just might not quite be over: Variety is reporting that a television production company, 44 Blue Productions, has inked a deal with him for a potential TV show. It's not totally serendipitous, as the entertainment site explained that Crocker has actually had a sizeable MySpace following for some time now, and that he's been on 44 Blue's radar for almost a year.
It isn't surprising that 44 Blue has been following him. Chris Crocker has been making popular videos on YouTube long before he became famous for the "Leave Britney Alone" video. He has a pretty funny video about MySpace's top friends lists here. Crocker's channel has over 51,000 subscribers. If Crocker gets his tv show and it is a success he might even be able to make popular celebrity blogger Perez Hilton a little jealous.
There are some events that celebrity and music bloggers cannot miss covering and Britney Spears' awful performance at the 2007 Video Music Awards is one of these events.
The vast majority of bloggers agree that Britney's performance was not good. Some say it was a bomb while others argue that it was not a total bomb. You can read some other blogger reviews here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The song Britney sang at the VMAs was called "Gimme More." It received mixed reviews -- some people didn't care much for the song before they had even seen Britney's performance. The analysis of Britney's performance is sure to continue as more facts come in. People is already talking about how Britney is now embarrassed and Kanye West claims they were both exploited by MTV. That should keep the gossip blogs posting.
Music bloggers also regularly cover events like the Video Music Awards. MTV was smart enough to put the entire show on its website in segments which
makes it easy to link to a particular part of the show. They did claim to offer embedding but when the embed code was posted into a blog and played the video wouldn't run. Instead viewers only see a message that says the video was only available on the MTV website. When are the big media companies going to realize that if they make short video clips available properly for embedding (even with a non-annoying ad) they are going to get much more exposure than they would by only allowing the video to be seen on their website? Here's what happens if you try to embed the video clip from MTV.com that contains Britney's sad peformance. As of this writing, it only shows a message that the Britney video can only be found on MTV.com. The player then starts running other performance from the show which are halted by yet another message sending viewers to MTV.com.
If MTV is going to go to the trouble to offer embedding, make sure it works properly and isn't some kind of bait and switch trick to get people to the website. Either it's embeddable or it isn't. Don't make viewers watch an ad, then not provide the video: that's obnoxious.
MTV should have simply noted that embedding was not available for this video. The video clip of the Britney's clumsy performance also appears frequently on YouTube, but it looks like it is being removed almost as quickly as it can uploaded. You can probably still find it periodically on YouTube by plugging in a Britney VMA search. There are also embeddable clips of the performance elsewhere like here on Brightcove.
Paris Hilton has blogged (hat tip Chicago Tribune) a July 4th holiday safety tip for fans. Paris writes, "remember to be responsible and have a designated driver!"
Hey everyone! I'm back from my much needed vacation in Maui. It was so beautiful and relaxing. But its good to be home again. I just want to thank you all for your letters of love and support. I am doing my best to respond to each and every one with the letter I wrote--that message was for fans like you who have supported me through it all.
I wanted to let you all know that I'm going to be updating my myspace and writing in more cause I haven't done it in awhile. The past month has inspired me to move forward with some exciting new projects, so I will keep you all posted.
Happy 4th of July everyone, and remember to be responsible and have a designated driver! Just looking out for you all. I love you and have an amazing summer!
xoxo
Paris
Paris Hilton was given a much longer jail sentence than most people serve for similar crimes. The Tribunewrites that "the notorious party girl has since touted a new beginning, one that she says won't include going out as much." It sounds like she is trying to stick to that promise although it hasn't been very long she left the county jail. Paris is wise to use her blog as a way to communicate with fans. If she blogs the right things she might also be able improve some people's negative opinion of her. It couldn't hurt.
Gossip Blogs Claim Lindsay Lohan's BlackBerry, Gmail and MySpace Hacked
Several celebrity gossip blogs here, here, here, here, here and here are reporting that Lindsay Lohan's private MySpace account has been hacked and emails and photos from her gmail and BlackBerry accounts were posted there. The Superficial says the emails include exchanges between Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, Shanna Moakler, Samantha Ronson, and Stavros Niarchos. Superficial's post also contains copies of some of these email exchanges. The emails include frequent use of foul language and very lousy spelling. Some of the blogs are saying that a website will be launched later containing all the information the people stole from Linday's gmail and BlackBerry account. It is hard to imagine all three services being hacked at once unless maybe one account was breached and Lindsay Lohan was using the same password for all three. Linday's MySpace profile appears to have been closed. The only message is there now is "Invalid Friend ID. This user has either cancelled their membership, or their acccount has been deleted."
Pagesix reports (hat tip Writer's Blog) that Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue who is now famous for being loosely portrayed in the The Devil Wears Prada, has expressed her displeasure of the word "blog."
Anna Wintour is as picky with words as she is with her wardrobe. According to one Vogue-er, "They are expanding the Vogue Web site and getting more involved with the Internet. But Anna hates the word 'blog' so much, she refuses to call anything on her site a blog and has charged her staff with coming up with a new word that isn't as garish-sounding. She wants it ASAP - in time for launch." However, a source close to Wintour said, "Anna just doesn't want people to refer to stories as blogs, because they're not. It's an improper use of the word." A rep said, "Anna has nothing against blogs."
So don't ever expect to find anything called a blog on Vogue's website. It will be interesting to see what Vogue's staff comes up with to replace the word blog. Eat the Press suggests "blogue" for the new word. The Writer's Blog is asking its readers to help Anna's staff out by coming up with a fashionable alternative to the "garish" word blog.
Two Celebrity Gossip Blogs Among Females Aged 17-25 Favorite Sites
Emarketer is reporting on a recent Youth Trends study of 17-to-25-year-olds. For both males and females Facebook was the number one website. What's most interesting about the study is that two blogs were among the top ten most popular website for females aged 17 to 25. The two blogs (both celebrity gossip blogs) are Pink Is the New Blog and What Would Tyler Durden Do. In case you don't know Tyler Durden is a character from the Fight Club movie.
The survey is conducted quarterly, and the previous quarter marked the first time that Facebook was tops among both women and men.
Two blogs were in the female top 10 list for the first time: Pink Is the New Blog and What Would Tyler Durden Do? (WWTDD). Both blogs have an entertainment/gossip focus, which Mr. Weil says "is consistent with Gen Y females' current adoration with content surrounding celebrities and their 'uh oh' moments."
MySpace was second on the top 10 list for females, but it remained sixth for males, with the percentage of 17-to-25-year-old males listing it as their favorite moving up slightly from 13% in the previous quarterly listing to 14%.
Blogs are getting very popular if they are now among the top websites young people visit. It is surprising that the Perez Hilton blog was not one of the the top sites as it is often referred to as the most popular celebrity blog.
Actress Tori Spelling is blogging on her MySpace site. Tori explains in this post how you can visit her in Temecula new B&B and she will "make your bed and serve you muffins."
Dean and I are so excited that our official myspace page is set up. We have so many things to share with you. First of all, our baby boy is due at the end of March! I can't believe I have a whole month left considering I feel like I'm ready to pop. At this point in the game i'm getting very exhausted and a little uncomfortable. Not to mention my little man is an active one.I think he spends most of his day either kung fu fighting in my belly or having a mean game of of twister with his umbilical cord. But, we cannot wait to meet him! And, we have another baby being born in March...Our new B&B (bed and Breakfast). We took it over a little while ago and renovations are in full swing. It was an older colonial B&B in Temecula that we are turning modern and chic for our generation...and its of course run by us. Yes, you read correctly... Tori Spelling will actually make your bed and serve you muffins if you stay there.
Tori Spelling and her husband Dean McDermott also have a reality show called Tori and Dean: Inn Love that will start on Oxygen March 20th at 1030pm. They also have the baby on the way.
Singers Mia Rose, Ashley Tisdale, Terra Naomi Build YouTube Audience
Singer Mia Rose has generated quite a bit of attention to her YouTube channel
and videos. Rose covers popular songs in her videos including "Unwritten",
"Break Away",
"Heaven"
and "L.O.V.E".
She talks in a
recent vlog about traveling to meetings for possible music deals. A Rolling Stoneblog post
discusses a backlash against Mia Rose from some Youtubers. There may be
some jealousy here.
During this past week Mia Rose gained over 35,000 YouTube subscribers.
That's very impressive considering that the leading YouTube channel -- which
belongs to the well-known Lonelgirl15 -- has 75,000 subscribers. Mia Rose's impressive week vaulted her into the fifth spot on the list of YouTubers with the most subscribers. Another Youtuber singer with potential going by the username esmeedenters
has also accumulated a significant number of subscribers (over 16,000) by covering popular songs in YouTube videos from singers like Beyonce
and Otis Redding.
Esmeendenters is Esmee from the Netherlands -- she also has a
MySpace page.
Young artists that already have contracts with major music labels are also
utilizing YouTube. Leading the way are Ashley Tisdale and Terra Naomi.
Ashley Tisdale, an actress/singer who is probably familiar to Disney Channel viewers, has also been building an audience on YouTube. A video of hers that is popular on YouTube called "Kiss the Girl" is a remake of Disney song. Tisdale already has a record contract -- her first album Headstrong will be released early next month. Ashley Tisdale has been vlogging concert clips and personal messages. Her channel has about 9,000 subscribers. Terra Naomi, who has signed with Island Records, has over 13,000 subscribers to her channel on YouTube.com. Her first video Say It's Possible includes film contributions from people around the world. Ashley Tisdale and Terra Naomi are looking mighty smart for jumping on YouTube early and providing frequent vlogs and updates for fans. With the massive amount of traffic YouTube has some musicians are clearly missing out on an obvious opportunity.
Other music-related Youtube channels with a significant number of
subscribers include Paris Hilton's Channel, Ryan Leslie TV, GiR2007 and
P. Diddy's Bad Boy Records. Paris Hilton has just over 10,000 subscribers to her channel
but most of that came when her channel was launched as part of a YouTube
promotion last August for her new album. She hasn't achieved much subscriber growth since then. Bad Boy Records has 11,000+ subscribers to its channel. Singer and music producer Ryan Leslie has over 16,000 subscribers to his popular channel. GiR2007, the group behind the funny pancakes
song and music video, has over 11,000 subscribers to its channel. MysteryGuitarMan's channel, which veers off into humor, also has 11,000 subscribers.
MySpace has a huge music section and is the home for numerous bands but artists. A MySpace profile is a must for wannabe music stars but new artists also should not overlook the possibilities a YouTube channel offers. This is still the early days of YouTube and video sharing. The combination of good music and good videos could quickly propel a new band to one of the top spots on YouTube's most
subscribed channels page. But at time marches on that opportunity will slip and it will become much more difficult to acquire enough subscribers to vault to the top of YouTube.
Posh (Victoria Beckham) has been blogging from the Beckham Brand Limited website at www.dvbstyle.com (thx A Socialite's Life). In addition to providing news Posh also has a photo blog and a video blog (click on vbtx for the videos). On January 15th she blogged about the much-discussednews that she will be moving to L.A with her husband David Beckham. David Beckham recently signed a contract to play soccer for L.A. Galaxy.
No doubt you will have heard the news by now that David and I are going to be moving to America. This is a really exciting move for us and the children, and one which we have thought about carefully. I know David is excited about promoting football in the USA and playing for L.A. Galaxy.
I'm really looking forward to making new friends and enjoying the sunshine in California. But I will be back often and will keep everybody here up to date with what's happening. Keep your eyes peeled for more news, which will be posted here on the DVB site.
Thanks
Victoria x
Good for Posh for providing three forms of media from her site: blogging, photos and videos. We added Victoria Beckham's blog to our list of celebrity blogs.
PerezHilton.com Loses One Advertiser But Gains Several More
Racy content and lawsuits (see here and here) so far aren't holding back advertisers from placing ads on the PerezHilton.com gossip blog. One ad was pulled recently from PerezHilton.com because of objections to some revealing celebrity photographs on the website according to a MediaPost article but there have been more than enough ads to take its place. The MediaPost says PerezHilton.com, which uses the Blogads ad network, has run ads for six different tv series in just the past week or so.
The ad formats have varied from featured spots in the right-hand skyscraper unit to full site takeovers. Series promoted include "Grey's Anatomy" and "Gay, Straight or Taken" on Lifetime, "Wildfire" on ABC Family, "Dirt" on FX, "Beauty and the Geek" on The CW Network, and "Surreal Life: Fame Games" on VH1. Spots on the site--arranged by blog ad network Blogads--range from $800 per week to $9,000 per week for placements in the skyscraper to significantly more for full site takeovers. Blogads declined to disclose the exact figure.
Blogads founder Henry Copeland said it is the site's young demographic and huge impressions that advertisers are after.
Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, said that brands are willing to advertise with Perez to tap into the blog's enormous readership. Blogads reports 15.6 million ad impressions weekly on the premium ad spot on PerezHilton.com, making it the most highly trafficked space in the entire Blogads network. "The most important factor: everyone at agencies and the clients is reading Perez," he said. "They know their target audience is reading it. And they know they have to be there if they want to hit America's 2 million trend-mavenest women in their twenties and thirties--the women who are the queen bees in their offices for entertainment news."
Perez Hilton will need to sustain its massive traffic in order to continue to interest advertisers. He will have to be able to fend off lawsuits from the photography agencies so he can continue running celebrity photographs. PerezHilton.com is also not without competition from the thousands of other celebrity blogs. A Broadcasting & Cablearticle says other celebrity sites used recently in a FX ad campaign included Gawker and PopSugar in addition to PerezHilton.com.
Lycos has announced that Perez Hilton's blog was the most-searched blog on Lycos in 2006. Perez Hilton is also being pursued by angry photo agencies who accuse him of constantly stealing their photos. Perez had 91% more searches the second-most searched for blog, the Huffington Post. Other top searched blogs included TMZ, Pink is the New Blog and PostSecret.
And from the blogosphere, Perez Hilton is the most-searched blog site of 2006, generating 91 percent more search interest than the second most popular blog site with web searchers, Huffington Post. While Huffington Post provides news and opinions, three of the top five most-searched blog sites this year cater to celebrity gossip news, including Perez Hilton, a.k.a. Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr., TMZ, a.k.a. "Thirty Mile Zone" around Hollywood, and Pink is the New Blog. The fifth most popular blog site in 2006 is PostSecret, an ongoing community art project where people anonymously email their secrets on postcards.
You can see the entire Lycos 50 here. The Lycos 50 also has a blog but it could use some new posts -- the last post was in October.
TMZ.com reports that Perez Hilton (real name Mario Lavandeira) is being sued for $7.5 million by a photo agency.
The tabloid agency is seeking over $7.5 million dollars in damages from Perez for what they say is a loss of profits and injury to their reputation. The photo agency believes their pics have played a large part in the success and profitability of perezhilton.com, which reportedly charges between $9,000 and $16,000 a week for ad space. It costs plenty to appear next to Britney's crotch!
Perez tells TMZ, "I have yet to be personally served with this lawsuit. My lawyers and I will address the situation when we have the opportunity to review the materials."
It turns out the lawsuit that is about to be filed is from multiple photo agencies who have joined together to sue Perez. You can read more about the lawsuit here on Splash's website. Splash is one of seven photo agencies suing Perez.
Perez Hilton is to be hit by a multi-million dollar federal lawsuit from the top seven paparazzi agencies in the US.
Splash News, INF, Ramey, Bauer Griffin, WENN, Most Wanted and Flynet have joined forces to stop Perezhilton.com from using copyrighted images.
"Perez claims he is making a fortune off exploiting pictures taken by photographers. He blatantly violates copyright and makes advertising revenue off other people's works," said Gary Morgan of Splash News.
"It is time he is held accountable for his actions. We have amassed a ton of evidence from all of these agencies detailing his infringements.
We have filed a letter to him giving him the chance to either pay up for all of his copyright violations or face the music. He only has a few days to decide."
A couple weeks ago Perez Hilton being was served with a cease-and-desist order and the video of the incident wound up on YouTube. The video was removed from YouTube but it can still be seen here. The photo agencies are definitely starting to crack down on unauthorized use of photographs and they are targeting Perez Hilton who they believe is a serial copyright violater.
Rachael Ray gets frequent mentions in the blogosphere -- she receives about 50 too 100 mentions a day according to a Technorati chart. However, not all of the posts about her are positive. That's not unusual for a celebrity to have harsh comments about them in blogs but what is unique about Ray's detractors is that they have organized into a very large group. The Boston Globereports that a group of LiveJournal bloggers united by their loathing of Rachael Ray have formed a community called the Rachael Ray Sucks Community. Membership to the community has swollen to over 1,000 since it first began about three years ago.
But what about shared dislikes? Can a community form around that? What is the opposite of a fan club? The answer is the Rachael Ray Sucks Community.
Gathering by way of the blogging and social-networking site LiveJournal, this group has more than 1,000 members, who are quite active in posting their latest thoughts and observations about the various shortcomings, flaws, and disagreeable traits of Rachael Ray, the television food personality.
"This community," the official explanation reads, "was created for people that hate the untalented twit known as Rachael Ray." The most important rule for those who wish to join: "You must be anti-Rachael!"
As with any community, the key to attracting members is not just a clear core idea but one that can be fulfilled in a variety of ways. Members of the Rachael Ray Sucks Community certainly do this, criticizing her cooking skills, her over-reliance on chicken stock, her kitchen hygiene, her smile, her voice, her physical mannerisms, her clothes, her penchant for saying "Yum-o," and so on.
It seems odd that people would spend their time in a club dedicated to despising a cooking celebrity but it is true. The Internet is full of niches -- even anti-individual celebrity niches or anti-fan clubs. The anti-Ray group probably doesn't like this much more postive blog about Rachael Ray called Everything Rachael Ray. They probably won't like any of the Yum-O links found there either.
Canada.com reports that Splash, a paprazzi agency, is the latest photography agency to take complaints that Perez Hilton is illegally copying photos one step farther.
In a letter drafted by L.A. law firm Makarem & Associates, Hilton was ordered to remove exclusive photos of Britney Spears holding her baby Jayden James, taken in Louisiana by Splash snappers Aaron St-Clair and Steve Dennett.
The legal move by Splash, one of the biggest paparazzi agencies in the world, comes just weeks after a photographer from FilmMagic confronted Hilton at a Hollywood event about pilfering his photos.
A defensive Hilton snapped at the photographer: “Nobody contacted me to take it down, so shut the f**k up!"
FilmMagic and sister agency WireImage are owned by MediaVast Inc.
Splash handed Perez a cease-and-desist letter at local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf cafe. You can even see the video of Perez receiving the cease-and-desist letter here on YouTube. The article says X-17 and Toronto-based LDP Images have also warned Perez Hilton about posting copyrighted photos on his blog. A post on Jossip said VH1 has passed on a Hilton show. Jossip writes, "we hear the celeb blogger's reality show recently got the shaken head from VH1. And, from what we understand, VH1 isn't the first network to say no to the production."
The upcoming wedding between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes is such a huge celebrity story that People magazine has launched a Tom and Katie Wedding Blog. The blog is full of information about the weddings numerous celebrity guests including Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, JLo and Marc Anthony and Brooke Shields. Don't expect any Oprah pictures -- she wasn't invited. Is Tom trying to say his couch jumping incident was somehow Oprah Winfrey's fault? There is considerable coverage from non-People bloggers as well. Any event that mixes big stars, scientology, a wedding ceremony and a haunted castle deserves heavy blog coverage. Gadling provides a photograph of the castle and is concerned for the local townspeople but neglects to mention the supernatural element. If you want to read many more blog posts about Tom and Katie's big wedding event try a Technorati search for "Tom Cruise Wedding" or "TomKat Wedding" and you won't be dissapointed.
Faith Hill Fury Story Kept Alive by Leann Rimes' Post
Many bloggers are discussing Faith Hill's outburst at the 2006 CMA Awards after losing the Female Vocalist of the Year award to Carrie Underwood. It is something that many stars have probably secretly wanted to do after losing a big award at an award's show. Faith Hill and her publicity team immediately tried to quiet speculation about the outburst with a statement that her shouting of "What!" after losing the award was just a joke and that she wasn't not being disrespectful. An article on Blogcritics explains how a post on Leann Rimes official website kept the story alive after the attempt by the publicist to say it was just a joke. The post by Faith Hill's friend Leann Rimes had a much different tone than the explanation given by Hill in her statement. This is part of the post Rimes made on her website according to the Blogcritics article.
"Okay, I usually keep quiet on topics like this but I feel I need to stand up for my friend, Faith. She was just being honest and emotional like every other person sitting at home with an opinion. These awards shows are SO political and we all get fed up with them. We all work very hard and have for many years so to see someone come in and win Female Vocalist that has been here for a VERY short time, is a little disheartening."
Unfortunately, the post has since been removed from Rimes' website. It certainly sounds like a much more honest explanation of what happened. Faith Hill has quickly become a hot topic in the blogosphere. She is currently the second top search on Technorati surpassed only by Donald Rumsfeld. Her outburst is also popular on YouTube.com. Blogcritics author Chris Evans writes, "There are currently 14 different videos of the now infamous 'Faith Hill Freak-Out' on YouTube, with a combined viewership of nearly 3 million." The Blogcritics article was written yesterday. Today, if you search YouTube for Faith Hill (and sort by view count) you can see several videos of her outburst with millions of views. There are easily over 7 million views total for these videos.
Jared Leto, an actor who totally despises blogs, attacked Scott Stereogum, the blogger at Stereogum, according to a post on Best Week Ever. Leto even hurt Stereogum's blogging finger.
After spotting Jared in the VIP section last night, Stereogum grabs some footage of himself boldly inquiring about Leto's stated hatred of blogs.
Jared, perhaps having made the realization he's actually among the blog scum he so loathes, firmly grabs Stereogum's arm and begins loudly expressing his displeasure with the question.
Sensing that the eyeliner-wearing rock goddess might be in danger, a nearby security monkey grabs Stereogum, erases all the data in his camera, and forcibly removes him from the entire venue, severly injuring his left ring finger - his BLOGGING FINGER - in the process.
Stereogum is now seeking medical attention and, possibly (if it were us, at least) legal counsel.
Hopefully, Jared Leto will calm down and stop attacking bloggers who are just trying to ask him questions. Best Week Ever says Leto also recently harassed actor Elijah Wood.
Blog Details Efforts to Get Brenda Starr Film Made
Actress Jenna Mattison has started a blog called Project Starr Light. The blog chronicles her attempts to get the Brend Starr comic made into a film for TV with her playing Brenda Starr. Editor & Publisherreports that the blog is on Zap2it which is a Tribune Media Services site. Tribune also syndicates the Brenda Starr comic so Tribune is aware of the film project.
The "Project Starrlight" blog is on the Zap2it entertainment Web site produced by Tribune Media Services, which also syndicates "Brenda Starr." The comic, created by the late Dale Messick, is now done by Mary Schmich and June Brigman.
Mattison's credits include writing, producing, and starring in the independent films "Fish Without a Bicycle" and "The Third Wish." She has also appeared on "Party of Five," "Beverly Hills 90210," "Married With Children," and other TV shows.
You can read more about Mattison's previous tv and film appearances here on IMDB.com and you can read more about her pitch idea in her initial blog post. Today, Mattison blogs that the Brenda Starr pitch received its first rejection from ABC Family. Hopefully, she will find success at another network.
Writers Write, Inc., the parent company of BloggersBlog.com, announces the launch of VideoNacho.com. VideoNacho.com features the Web's hottest short videos and film clips. Video Nacho's editors find the best videos on the Web so you don't have to: music, comedy, pets antics, social commentary: it just has to be entertaining. Enjoy a delicious short new video snack every afternoon. Calorie-free, it's sure to give you a lift!
VideoNacho.com is the twentieth blog to join the Writers Write Lifestyle Network. It follows the launch in May, 2006 of WatchersWatch.com, a blog covering what's hot in movies and television.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, also known as the Olsen twins, have launched a new blog (url: blog.mary-kateandashley.com). The blog details Mary-Kate and Ashley's travel adventures which most recently have included Madrid and Paris. The blog contains many photographs of the twins including pictures with fans. The girls are also including iPod reveals in their posts.
As for the iPod reveal, here's Mary-Kate:
Some of the fun music I've been listening to on the trip are the Babyshambles, Cream, and The Doors.
The blog launched late last month and there have been about a dozen posts since then. That's pretty active for a celebrity blog. Based on this post it sounds like the Olsen twins are editing the comments themselves.
Hey, so we finally had some time to approve all of your wonderful comments yesterday. We read them all! Thank you for all of your sweet music and book suggestions and well wishes.
Keep them coming, and we'll continue to post all of your thoughts for the world to read. Remember: You have to click on the "comment" link to the bottom right of each post to read your messages.
If they keep traveling to exciting cities and attending hip fashion shows they shouldn't have any trouble coming up with new content and pictures for their blog. (via The Bosh)
Min Online has an article that says blogs and RSS feeds are fueling traffic growth at People.com. People.com's Fran Hauser told Min that even though people are reading blogs that still come back to People to verify if stories bloggers have posted are true.
Many of these newcomers become true brand loyalists. According to People Group Digital g.m. Fran Hauser, about 70% of PEOPLE.COM traffic comes in at the front door, which means a high share of the audience deliberately returns to the PEOPLE.COM URL rather than tripping into the site sideways, via article links at portals or blogs. "That's a special metric to us,” says Hauser. "It shows how loyal and engaged they are."
Some are downright FANatical. PEOPLE.COM traffic breaks into two distinct browsing types. "Grazers" pop in briefly for a headline check and a celebrity snap or two. "Enthusiasts" hit the site several times a day and rack up more than a dozen page views as they drill into article sections and slideshows. The design tries to capture both mindsets, with headlines and a ticker along the left well and large photo sets inviting you to browse.
Surprisingly, PEOPLE.COM execs are seeing ever more traffic coming from the site's RSS ( Real Simple Syndication ) feeds, which Google and Yahoo users now can add to their personalized home pages. The site gets about 2 million visits a month just from the RSS channel. Likewise, the celebrity blogs are becoming an important funnel of new traffic, if not always the final word. "We talk to a lot of consumers. They will go to the blogs to get a quick fix but we hear that they always come to PEOPLE.COM to see if [the story] is true," says Hauser.
2 million monthly visits via RSS is impressive. Min's article speculates that part of the reason behind People's RSS success is that they have a youthful demographic with an average age of 28. Surveys conducted about RSS have found that younger demographics are much more likely to use RSS and news aggregators.
Singer, songwriter and blogger John Mayer is poking fun at some of the most popular celebrity blogs including Perez Hilton, Pink Is The New Blog and TMZ.com on his blog. TMZ.com wrote about it here.
Celebrities obviously have a love/hate relationship with media outlets. They certainly love the ability to promote themselves and their latest projects, but of course, many claim they also hate the attention given to their "personal" lives. In the old days, celebs only had to worry about tv cameras and talboid rags. In the new millenium blogs are evolving into a prime source for the public's seemingly unending appetite for all things celebrity. It's obvious that even Grammy winner John Mayer is tuning in to "new media."
On his blog, JM has a little fun mimicking our pals at Perez Hilton and Pink Is The New Blog. JM co-opts their generally hilarious style of adding commentary to photos and pokes a little fun at being a celebrity and at us celebrity watchers. And it seems John reads TMZ as well! He's got his own "JMZ.com " entries that look an awful lot like a really cool site we all know and love. It's good to see John has a sense of humor and can make fun of not only us, but himself. Just one thing missing ... no Jessica Simpson posts?
You can see some of Mayer's posts spoofing the top gossip blogs here. Scroll through Mayer's September archives if that link doesn't work -- Mayer's blog seems to lack permalinks. It is good to see a celebrity who both blogs and knows some of the blogs well enough to write in their style. Mayer even provides some great tips for avoiding zombies on his blog.
The thing too is, you can sometimes trick zombies into thinking that you're one of them. If you walk through a whole pack of zombies, and you're all like "bbbuuuurrrrgggghhhhh", like they are, there's a chance they won't notice you're even there. But as soon as you start talking, or showing basic cognitive reason, zombies are all over you.
You won't find valuable tips like that on Ready.gov. Of course, Jared Leto, the actor who wants blogging to die a sudden death, probably wants John Mayer to stop blogging immediately.
Actor Jared Leto has had enough of blogging. In an interview with G4's blog The Feed, Leto said he wants blogging to die.
G4: Do you do a lot of blogging from the road?
JARED: No, I think that blogging should die a sudden death.
G4: Why?
JARED: It's just ridiculous. It's like a playground for four-year-olds. People say and do things in the world of blogs that they would never do in real life, and I think it's a false experience. You know, it's, like, eating too much candy.
Jared doesn't deny reading celebrity gossip blogs when asked by G4's The Feed. Jared says blogs are a fad and compares blogs to parachute pants.
G4: So you don't read alot of the celebrity gossip blogs, I take it?
JARED: Well, you know, one of the things along those lines that bothers me about when people start citing blogs as news sources is that when people are writing on these blogs, they feel like they don't feel they need to do any research or back up their opinions with facts or anything, you know what I mean?
G4: Why is there this inherent lack of responsibility when it comes to blogging as journalism?
JARED: I couldn't tell you. Times have changed. It used to be, to be a writer you had to have experience and talent, and learn a craft. Now anybody with an opinion, which is anyone and everyone, feels that it's worthy. Technology is allowing people to have access to things where before it required very great skill. So there will be some interesting developments from that, and also some things that are pretty worthless. Pretty soon anybody with a cell phone is going to be able to be a news reporter. The blog is yesterday's parachute pants. It's here now but it's gone tomorrow.
Later in the interview Jared says most of the bloggers are just trying to make money and dupe people.
JARED: Sometimes it's interesting, but most of the time the bloggers themselves are just trying to get famous so they can make some money and sell advertising dollars and duping these poor people who are on the internet all day long.
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