It's A Doug's Life.: Blog Breakdown 3

Ahh celebrity gossip. What better way to waste one's life than talking about the lives of others of higher public notability. Still, considering the sales of magazines like Hello and OK! (reader base of 30 million), not to mention the internet traffic flowing through certain gossip sites, there are enough views to make it a worthwhile topic.

The main blog I'll be focussing on today is Per ezHilton.com, a site created and authored by Mario Lavandiera, a 30 year old former magazine journalist. He started his blogging career with pagesixsixsix.com, which quickly gained notoriety for it's scything remarks about some of Los Angeles' celebrity populus. PerezHilton was the successor to PageSixSixSix, and today recieves anywhere in between 1.5 and 2 million unique visitors monthly.

Lavandiera's site is very colourful, predictably feature a whole lotta pink. Stylistically, it's probably one of the best laid out blogs of all genres that I came across, with a big well designed banner across the top of the page (see the logo above), and features across the page including:

A centrally placed blog column. All blogs have large pictures accompanying them, often 'shopped or painted with Lavandiera's controversial doodling (for example see the Palin family portait here).
A video box on the right-hand side of the page, where Lavandiera posts any media of interest related to celebrity lives and lifestyles.
A 'Starseeker' search tool, complete with a drop down list of all persons commented on in the Perez blogs, along with a date search facility.
Advertisements related to the site and it's expected fan base.
Easy and clear information on how to contact Lavandiera.

The posts are well written (as would be expected from a former magazine writer), and feel personal and conversational to the point where it is hard to click away half-way through a post. Whilst I'm not normally one to care for these gossip blogs, I did find Lavandiera's angles and style fairly humourous, even if the stories are overly focussed on the happenings of LA.

Regarding competition for PerezHilton, it's interesting to note (ok, no it isn't) that Hello magazine is yet to create a blog, and OK! magazine has a very basic one yet to be worth its while. There are some others which are ok though, primarily because of their placing at the top of a google search for 'gossip blog':

TMZ is a big hitter here, getting as much as 5 million unique visitors on a good month. They have an unfair advantage in this area, being owned by Time Warner, with a staff setup more similar to a tabloid journal. The site itself is very large, containing videos and pictures in gallerys on dedicated pages, but with all the blogs posted to the home page they are a main feature. The layout is less than great - the page is simply too busy looking, however the posts themselves are good - large pictures, catergorising enabling viewers to look at only the stories interesting to them. Because of their use of the paparazzi they are able to get hold of more stories first than Perez Hilton, helping to explain their larger viewer base. The videos and photos would also go someway to explaining this (videos appear in web searches and are sometimes used by larger news agencies when reporting the stories - The Kanye West blog I posted a few days ago included a TMZ video I first saw on the BBC website). They also have the money to pay for advertising, something not done by PerezHilton.

The Superficial boasts unique visits in the region of 630,000 per month, which while not as colossal as Perez or TMZ, is still a hell of a lot of people. IMHO it's soo much better than TMZ as a blog, using the same sharp comments and humour found on Lavandiera's PerezHilton, if not even more biting (on the front page today are suggestions of Hugh Heffner's impotentce, Kanye's 'flipping the fuck out' and Criss Angel's being a 'douche'...nice). The layout is good, with a dark, stylish background discreetly including a site sponsor, with a clear white colum through the centre for the blog postings. All the posts have large pictures, as is appearing to be the norm with these gossip sites...perhaps Nick Robinson could learn something from this? Overall - We like.

The Defamer is the next site on our whistle-stop tour of the gossip blogs. It's layout is almost identical to that of gadget site Gizmodo (reviewed 2 days ago)...of course this is probably unsurprising as both sites are owned by the Gawker Media Network. The articles are less shameless than those on TMZ, and take a less offensive stance than The Superficial, whilst being more about celebrity news on a professional angle than that of the celebrities' lives. It's a pretty good effort, with 3 writers contributing articles every hour or less. I think it's fairer than the afforementioned blogs, but it isn't being fair that gets people reading your blogs - it's about being interesting and funny. I'm not sure this blog has enough going for it to attract larger numbers.

DamnImCute and CelebCrust are much smaller offerings, only really making into this list because of their google listing. I don't have much to say about these two which I haven't already said about the other gossip blogs - they're all opinionated, all feature large pictures. DamnImCutes' unique selling point is it's 'Damn I'm Old:Celebrity Birthdays' feature, whereas CelebCrust takes a more focussed view at the high-level actors and mucisians, along with film and music news related to them. They're ok, but not as comprehensive as the others, so less drawing.

So there we go - that's my rundown of all three genres. Yes, it may be a little long-winded, but it tells you all you need to know about them, and I think it gets my points across...

Now back to normal service...Tomorrow I'll bring a run-down of some of the best viral videos doing the rounds right now.

Until then.