MSN Wonderwall Aggregates Celebrity Slop

Microsoft's latest site will chase the likes of TMZ and PerezHilton as an outlet for celebrity gossip.

Microsoft has dipped its toes in some pretty bizarre tidepools over the years (remember Actimates?) but  the latest might more accurately be described as a sludge pool: celebrity gossip. On Thursday, the company launched Wonderwall, its celebrity gossip portal.

Like its contemporaries TMZ, PerezHilton and even Yahoo OMG, Wonderwall will aggregate steaming piles of celebrity gossip, dirt and rumors into a snappy, glossed up wall of photos. Click on any one, and Wonderwall drags up a short article to accompany it. Categories on launch day included “Geek Goddesses,” “So Random,” “LOL Pics,” and of course, the Christian-Baled inspired “Famous Freakouts.”

Why bother competing with so many other sites covering the same old material? MSN general manager Rob Bennet told the Wall Street Journal that Wonderwall hopes to contend by aggregating it all in a single destination. He does concede, though: “The reality is a lot of the same content and the same audience is there.”

While MSN funded most of the venture, the production firm BermanBraun (with former Yahoo Media Group head Lloyd Berman at the helm) will produce content for it.