MySpace is aiming to the crack the entertainment and celebrity market with a new spin-off, MySpace Celebrity, which the company is touting as "Hollywood's new homepage".
The new website will feature news, gossip from People magazine's website, blogs, video content and an index of more than 300 official celebrities that have profiles on MySpace.
Official celebrity profiles already featured on MySpace include Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton and Vince Vaughn.
The launch of the dedicated celebrity area marks the latest step in MySpace's strategy to broaden its image beyond its reputation as a home for music.
It has already launched a dedicated MySpace channel for politics, called Impact, and has a gaming portal in the works.
"MySpace Celebrity is Hollywood's new homepage," said MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson. "Celebrities have been using MySpace since the site's launch and it's a natural extension for us to now offer them an aggregated channel where they can be in control of their own image.
"We want MySpace users to connect with celebrities in the same way that they do with musicians."
Pooling the official celebrity profiles in one place will make it much easier for fans to weed out the many fake celebrity sites that have been set up by other MySpace users.
The website will include a "featured icon" spot – with Matthew McConaughey taking the slot at launch today – that includes exclusive questions and answers.
Other features include articles highlighting charity work done by celebrities, behind-the-scenes footage of life as a star and daily blogs by different celebrities. Getty Images will supply the official celebrity photos for the website.
Separately, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that MySpace has been subpoenaed to give evidence about the bizarre suicide of a 13-year-old girl who was bullied on the social networking website.
Megan Meier, from Missouri, hanged herself after being tormented on MySpace by an imaginary 16-year-old, a character allegedly created by one of the girl's neighbours.
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