Yahoo gossip site outdrawing established website rivals

Celebrity news website Yahoos OMG has managed to make inroads in this section thanks to its parent companys vast audience and its partnership with NBCs Access Hollywood, which is a recognized brand in the field.

New York, Sept 22 : Celebrity news website Yahoo's OMG has managed to make inroads in this section thanks to its parent company's vast audience and its partnership with NBC's "Access Hollywood," which is a recognized brand in the field.

Yahoo OMG was launched June 11, and at the end of its first month, it had 3.7 million unique visitors.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, the audience grew more than 80 percent by the end of July and finished August with 6.7 million visitors.

The site, however, ranks behind AOL's TMZ.com, which had 9.4 million visitors in August, but was ahead of People.com and E! Online with 5.8 million and 3 million visitors, respectively, says the Hollywood Reporter.

Although OMG! and TMZ both owe a good deal of their success to their highly trafficked parent portals, the sites have fundamental differences.

OMG! aggregates its news from the Associated Press, Reuters and "Access," which an NBC Uni executive described as its "premier" partner, while TMZ has its own team of reporters, who have broken many of the more lascivious gossip stories in the past year. nother key difference is that, by one account at least, OMG! readers don't appear to be hard-core gossip fans and many times seem to click on the site while passing through Yahoo.

According to Web research firm Compete, 63 percent of OMG!'s visitors from its launch through early September didn't visit another gossip site, and they also spent less time at the site than visitors to People, TMZ or E!

ANI