ShowHype

Tonight we opened up a site that we’ve been working on for the past couple of months: ShowHype, the web’s best place to find news and video about entertainment. When we considered possible vertical extensions of Ballhype, celebrity gossip and entertainment news made the most sense because

• the fans are just as obsessive, if not more so, than sports fans, which fuels
• 24×7 updates on celebrity and entertainment news, so there is always fresh content to hype up and discuss, but
• there are thousands of entertainment blogs, making it very difficult to sort through them all to find the really good stories that you care about

When we launched Ballhype, we had strong ties to some top sports bloggers, and were acquainted with many more. We also had the benefit of two months of closed beta testing to build relationships with a core group of users. There is no doubt that our success has been due in large part to their support. With ShowHype, we don’t have a huge network of entertainment bloggers who are ready to sound the trumpets.

Where Ballhype came flying out of the gate due to a great deal of initial publicity, then found its footing over the next couple of weeks, ultimately growing at an average of 50% each month, I predict ShowHype will have a smaller launch and take a couple of months to get the same level of acceptance among entertainment bloggers.

Of course, one big advantage with this launch is that we have a community of users who are used to voting and commenting on stories. The question is how many of them do we get to follow us to Hollywood?

Posted by Erin 14.Oct.07 Milestones, ShowHype Read more Comment (1)