February 6, 2009 by Matt Thomas
As anyone who has ever looked at the year-end stats for Google searches and noticed the preponderance of Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus enquiries will know, celebrities mean a lot to internet users. Finally one of the big online names has decided to properly cater to this market and it’s not the one you’d think.
MSN, arguably the least cool of the big three search providers, has decided to launch a celebrity site intended to rival the likes of the established TMZ.com and PerezHilton.com. It’s called Wonderwall and it’s being backed by Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman, two established TV producers and Hollywood ‘insiders.’
The site is basically what it says, a wall, allbeit one with celebrity pictures, graphics and features pinned to it. It will basically take all the celebrity content on MSN and put it in one place for your voyeuristic pleasure.
But what about tone? Celebrity gossip sites are often fairly bitchy, sometimes even crossing the line into flat out bad taste. Lloyd Braun doesn’t deny this, stating that, “Wonderwall will definitely have edge. Just not over the top.”
It’s that last sentence that may spell disaster for the site, the main appeal of the TMZ’s, Perez Hilton’s and Holy Moly’s of the internet is irreverence, a willingness to attack the sacred cows of celebrity, often viciously. It is, in short, a job for a couple of guys with laptops, not a multinational company with shareholders to answer to.
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