Bonnie Fuller, long a master of reinvention, is trying to rebrand herself as an Internet entrepreneur and resurrect the magazine Hollywood Life as a Web site aimed at women aged 18 to 34.
Hollywoodlife.com debuted Tuesday, and while the flashy Web site is loaded with big colors and big pictures, it still faces a huge challenge in breaking through the Web’s celebrity clutter.
She made a smart move in getting wealthy Jay Penske, the son of the famous race car driver Roger Penske, as her backer. But Fuller definitely does not have a good position at the starting gate.
Fuller, who made about a dozen hues of pink her trademark at celebrity magazines, uses the color liberally on the new site.
She also splashes herself around. Psst, Bonnie: We know and sometimes love you, but magazine editors are not celebrities.
Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is fine, but Barry Diller makes it happen. Mark Golin, a one-time editor-of-the-year, never puts himself into People.com.
Its oversized celebrity photos set Fuller’s site’s design apart. But while it looks good on wide-screen computers, on an iPhone or BlackBerry, not so much.
The stories are intended to be wide ranging, covering not just celebrities but fashion and lifestyle. Fuller succeeded with that at Glamour and earlier at Marie Claire, but struggled when she tried to pull it off at Star.
In 2008, there were 120 major Web sites dedicated to following celebrity culture, pulling in 43.4 million unique visitors a month.
By 2009, sources said, the number of major sites had grown by 75 percent to 210 — but the audience numbers have not kept pace, growing to 45.8 million.
Fuller, starting late, must try to overtake rivals such as RadarOnline and Us Weekly, which is pulling in over 4 million unique visitors a month.
At the same time, she’s up against monster sites such as Yahoo!’s OMG, which is pulling in 18 million to 19 million a month, and People.com, which has 12 million unique visitors. Post staff