iGossip Tries Blending Citizen Journalism With Celebrity Buzz

iGossip

With social media and user-generated content increasingly influencing mainstream news coverage, it was only a matter of time before that influence made its way over to entertainment news. Blogs like TMZ and Jezebel may attract tons of user comments — but they’re not crowd-sourcing the stories they cover. One site that’s trying to combine citizen journalism, social media and celebrity gossip is iGossip.com; out of beta today, users can post, comment on and share articles about their favorite celebrities.

Co-founder Devin Rice said he founded the site with partner Curtis Robinson with a “small, five-figure investment” from a private entrepreneur. Initially launched as EyeGossip.com last year, the site failed to gain much traction until recently. Unique visits lingered in the hundreds to low thousands until they scored the iGossip.com domain and did a complete redesign; over the past three months, traffic has spiked from around 1,200 uniques in April, to over 38,000 in May, and over 117,000 in June (per Compete).

iGossip isn’t glossy — in fact, the homepage looks like it could use some polish. But Rice said the simple design and interface (users create profiles, earn badges for posting popular stories, etc.) is also fueling the traffic surge. “We tried to make it look a little more like OMG with different modules, but traffic actually slowed down after that,” he said. “The goal is to keep it as simple as possible so that everyone’s stories get enough face-time; people like seeing what they’ve written hit the top of the homepage.”

Currently running *Google* AdSense display ads, Rice said the site is making “a little bit” of money — but that he’d been “in talks” with networks like Glam and Gorilla Nation. “We need to raise our CPMs with a better ad network,” he said. As for concerns that brands might be leery of having their ads running alongside user-generated gossip content, Rice said iGossip’s users self-policed to make sure that stories weren’t too lewd or mean-spirited.

And for an exit strategy, Rice said getting acquired was an obvious option, though the preferred route would be to have bigger sites like TMZ start pulling in branded iGossip modules on a rev-share basis.

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