Vera Sweeney Rises To The Top With Celebrity Gossip
As a stay-at-home mom living in Garden City with two babies, Vera Sweeney needed an outlet, a place to pour her creative energy, a place to indulge her obsession with celebrity gossip.
She might’ve been perfectly satisfied reading about Britney and Paris and Lindsay and BCBG and fitted jeans on somebody’s Web site.
Instead, she created her own.
“I’m Not Obsessed” says it all. “If you’re reading it, you are obsessed,” claims Sweeney, who, at 30, has found a calling – and a substantial income – dishing out various degrees of dirt.
Those hungry for chat, photos and matters of the fashionistas will find the usual suspects at “Obsessed.” Milla Jovovich out shopping was a recent lead story; Lindsay and Paris were on hand, of course, and there was a link as well to the Wu Yi Source Chinese diet page (”If you can lend me just 11 minutes of your time, then I’m about to show you exactly what has been kept a POWERFUL weight loss ’secret’ by the people of China for over 400 years … “).
Talk about instant networking: Sweeney, who started the site just about two years ago, said she scours dozens of sources daily for her various tidbits, and maintains a stable of 12 writers, who get paid based on the number of views, or “hits,” their stories receive on the site.
“As a child, there were a lot of Teen Beats and Tiger Beats in my room that my mom got for me,” said Sweeney, who grew up in Queens. “I was always fascinated by that sort of stuff, unfortunately. … I just took it to the next level as an adult.”
Sweeney researched many Web blogs and gossip sites, and decided that establishing the mechanics to do her own thing online was workable. What she didn’t borrow from the existing gossip models was attitude.
“Most celebrity gossip blogs have this formula, snarky and mean-spirited,” she said. “When I started, I had tried to be nasty, but then I felt like there was a market for people who just wanted the information. It seems to me that we’re becoming more invasive. I try not to publish peering-into-windows stuff.”
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