New York — Search engine company Yahoo! is expected to announce their new collaboration with TV gossip show “Access Hollywood.”
The site, to be known as omg! — Internet shorthand for “oh my God” — is expected to be announced Monday. It is being eyed as a competitor to Time Warner’s fast-growing TMZ.com, which dishes dirt nearly 24/7.
omg! features’ celebrity news and information that is updated throughout the day, big photos and exclusive video, news sorted by celebrity and hot topics, and user comments and feedback.
Market analysts claim that Yahoo! wants to set up this new portal to challenge the domination of Time Warner’s TMZ.com which has become the hottest celebrity gossip destination on the web.
Incidentally, this would be the first major development of its kind ever since Yahoo appointed former ABC programming Chief Lloyd Braun as head of Yahoo Media Group. Yahoo failed to do much on this front and fired Braun in December last year.
Access Hollywood Executive Producer Rob Silverstein said in a release that the entertainment program will provide omg! with at least five original stories and videos a day. In addition, AccessHollywood.com will provide omg! with regular online exclusives, including first looks at some of the show’s biggest interviews. Additionally, omg! is teaming with a number of top celebrity photo agencies that include X17 and Splash News.
With the exponential growth of our Web site over the last year, we have been looking forward to this partnership with Yahoo!’s fresh new site to continue our efforts online, said Silverstein. “There is a particularly insatiable appetite for celebrity news online and we are looking forward to working together with omg! as they truly get it.”
The omg site represents the first significant content collaboration with Hollywood to come out of Yahoo in quite some time. After Yahoo appointed former U.S. network ABC programming Chief Lloyd Braun as head of Yahoo Media Group in 2004, the company was supposed to get aggressive in the entertainment space. But after several false starts, Braun was tossed out in December, and Yahoo has made only modest additions to its programming mix since.
omg! helps connect Yahoo! users with their passion for celebrity culture and news. And no one does a better job of covering the celebrity beat than Access Hollywood, said Karin Gilford, the General Manager of Yahoo! Entertainment. Together, “Access Hollywood” and omg! deliver the ultimate experience for every celebrity enthusiast.
Yahoo! executives seemed as excited about the partnership as Goldstein.
“omg!’s got everything from the Olsens, to Orlando,” said Gilford. Yahoo! is uniting fans and their favorite celebrities with a click of the mouse. We are rolling out the purple carpet for today’s latest hotties, superstars and pop idols and giving them the Yahoo! treatment.
Market sources added that Access Hollywood would also be revamping their own website adding social networking features to enhance user experience.