Last week I came across Blogebrity.

My initial response was why would anyone wish to read it. My second thought was all is, vanity, vanity, all is vanity. I don’t care about the A list, nor the B, C, or V list. My final thought was that is was US based. Sorry, I really like blogging, but I’m not interested in reading about blog celebrities. If I want to read, I’ll go directly to their sites, which can be found in any portal, search engine or feed.

The Blog Herald has discoverd Blogebrity is fake.

and is part of a competition called the Contagious Media Showdown being run by Eyebeam, a non-profit center for art and technology based in New York. The crux of the competition is to create viral sites, with the most successful sites in terms of traffic and links winning prizes.

Riley raises a couple of concerns. Since it’s a fake site that has a registration, what happens to the email addresses. There is nothing up that says they won’t be spammed or used?

The people behind blogebrity also appear to be writing Gawker Media knockoffs with stolen code as well, whether this is part of the competition or not I’m not sure, but potentially what the competition is doing goes beyond promoting innocent spoof sites and provides potential encouragement of illegal, or immoral activities, and bloggers are being manipulated as part of the process. Far to many questions and concerns and not enough answers. We’d note that something that Nick Denton is seemingly involved in as well (he helped launch the competition) would not potentially deceive so many bloggers as well.

If it isn’t fake and bloggers aren’t being deceived what is the point? Vanity? Traffic? Use of emails? Viral marketing for what?