Dan Abram’s recently launched media gossip and analysis site Mediaite, has steadily gained traction as a media news blog and today is announcing expansion to other news verticals, including technology, fashion and sports. Abrams wrote in a post that Mediaite’s sites are on track to see over one million unique visitors in December, was listed on Technorati’s top 40 blogs, and expects to turn a profit next year. That’s not so shabby growth considering the implosion the news industry over the past year.
Geekosystem will serve as a tech and “geek” news and analysis site, with coverage of gadget, video games, comics books and science fiction. According to Abrams, the site will “merge the content aggregation of popular “Internet Culture” destinations with the editorial voice of the post-Web 2.0 generation of geek luminaries.” Not how much this will differ from analysis on other tech news sites.
Styleite will be a fashion and beauty site focused towards gathering user-generated content, and will integrate e-commerce (woich we know is a trend that other fashion and beauty sites, like Lucky Magazine, are beginning to follow). Styleite will include news and analysis of a broad spectrum of trends from couture to street-style.
Mediaite will also launch a sports-focused version of its Power Grid, which currently ranks and indexes media players based on news, analysis and events. SportsGrid will combine multiple financial, statistical, and media metrics to determine who are the biggest forces in sports, both on and off the field. Abrams says that both Styleite and Geekosystem will both feature industry-specific version of the Power Grid . It’s unclear who Abrams will be poaching for to contribute to thes sites, but he did indicate that “lead figures” for these sites will be drawn from the Mediaite family.
Mediaite’s expansion comes as no surprise. When I interviewed Abrams a few months ago, he indicated that he was was looking to build a Mediaite mini-empire by expanding to other verticals in the near future. Abrams told me that while breaking news is important, his site was focused on providing analysis to all news. Abrams was also bullish on the significance of video on Mediaite and launched a partnership with Magnify.net to power UGC video and in-house content.