ShowHype - a Digg For ShowBiz & Gossip
Remember Ballhype, the sports-oriented Digg clone we’ve profiled a while ago? Although I personally had some reservations about the imageless and generally lackluster design, it seems to be doing really well. They claim a 50% increase in visitors every month, and Alexa’s stats seem to confirm this.

Well, fueled by the growth of Ballhype, the same team decided to create ShowHype - a RSVC (Read Submit Vote Comment) site for gossip and show business. The site is currently in private beta (it launches on Sunday), so you won’t be able to access it just yet, but at least you can see what the same team had done with Ballhype.
ShowHype brings you stories about movies, television, music, celebrities, and other topics in a familiar Digg-like style, with charts and a degree of customization thrown into the mix. Free registration will let you track certain topics, communicate with other users, and track their favorite stories, votes, or comments as well.
However, most importantly, the developers have realized that design is not their strong side, so they’ve outsourced that part of ShowHype, and the result is much better. Images, which are obligatory for this type of site, are included, although I’m betting that they’d have better results with even bigger images. On a side note, Erin Gurney from Ballhype told me that Ballhype is due for a much needed redesign, too.

In all my days of tracking social content sites and Digg clones I’ve seen only a few that will ever amount to anything. It’s hard to decipher the formula which makes such a site successful, and Ballhype - although a solid site - hasn’t really done anything very much out of the ordinary. However, Ballhype’s success so far gives reasons for optimism. We’ll see if ShowHype does that well, too; if it does, then this team might be onto something that others are missing.
October 12th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Thanks for the write-up, and we’re glad you like the new design! One of the reasons why Ballhype has worked, and why we think ShowHype has a lot of promise, is that our content engine finds the best stories from the long tail of sports and now entertainment.
October 13th, 2007 at 12:09 am
@Erin: thanks for stopping by. Yes, it’s the content that’s important, I guess; it’s just that not many Digg-like sites have been able to nail the magic formula. Good luck with ShowHype.
March 15th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I added this to digg
March 16th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I found this website through yahoo
June 30th, 2009 at 4:04 am
I don?t usually reply to posts but I will in this case. WoW
July 1st, 2009 at 9:51 am
Hi. I read a few of your other posts and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links?