Hitwise, recently acquired by Experian, does more than just analyze the Internet—they track gossip!
"The past year has seen significant growth in traffic to celebrity gossip blogs. PerezHilton.com was one of the most visited gossip blogs, increasing in market share of visits by 621% from March 2006 to March 2007. Traffic to the top 20 gossip blogs, as shown on the chart below, increased significantly due to events involving Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith."
Not sure what’s scarier, that a large data company is devoting so much time to gossip tracking, or that the numbers for gossip interest are exploding.
