Entertainment sites gear up online for Oscars

Cory Bergman February 20th, 2007

The Oscars air this weekend, and entertertainment sites like People.com and Eonline.com are gearing up for the big night with more video! more photos! more blogs! (It’s interesting to note that video blog upstart TMZ.com has surpassed both of those sites as the top entertainment destination.) Also, Oscar.com has relaunched with a new look, embedded player and all kinds of flashy features. “We want the Oscars to be a two-screen experience,” said Laura Ziskin, who is producing this year’s broadcast. “I’m big on content, so I want to transmit as much content as possible. The website is natural.” Last year, Oscar.com grew 39 percent to a unique audience of 720,000 on Oscar week, and this year organizers say the site has already surpassed last year’s traffic. Screen grab…

Adds Rick in comments: “I’m not sure that I would describe a company funded by AOL as an ‘upstart.’ but TMZ has brought in a lot of video views in the past year. Speaking of video, while Oscar.com has a lot of cool stuff, it’s frustrating that you can’t link directly to their videos, much less share them or embed them. Which seems like a natural for that Ellen Degeneres video ‘blog’ they’re promoting.”