MSN unveils a wall of entertainment news

LOS ANGELES: Microsoft Corp's Web portal MSN on Thursday unveiled gossip site Wonderwall.com, a scrolling wall of star photos and news meant to give users the feel of flipping through a celebrity magazine.

MSN expects Wonderwall, produced by Hollywood company BermanBraun, will encourage users to spend more time on the site than they have elsewhere on the Web portal, and that it will allow novel approaches to advertising.

Boosting Web advertising has been a challenge for Internet companies, with advertisers paying much less per spot than they do on television.

Rob Bennett, general manager of network programming for MSN, said the site marks a departure from older advertising models borrowed from TV that revolve around video ads.

"I think the industry, at large, sort of stayed in that mode for probably too long, and I think we could have pushed the innovation more to take advantage of the benefits of the online medium," Bennett said.

For instance, if a celebrity is wearing a certain brand of sunglasses in a photo, Wonderwall visitors could click on the image to get product info and buy the fashion item, he said.

Wonderwall competes against numerous celebrity news sites, including TMZ.com which is a joint venture of Telepicture Productions and AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc.

BermanBraun, the production company behind the site, has television and film divisions. Alex Blagg, the lead editor of Wonderwall, created the popular blog "Best Week Ever" for cable channel VH1.

Wonderwall is poised to capitalize on high interest in entertainment news. Tracking firm Comscore reports 84 percent of Web users visit an entertainment site every month, which is more than visit always popular social networking sites.

The site's tone is going to be akin to the magazine US Weekly, neither too rosy or too snarky, Bennett said.

"We think it's something that the users will just naturally understand and have fun with," he said.