You would think that in this day of age with all its technology that the younger generations of celebrities would go with the trend of everything being interactive. But apparently this isn’t the case; taking a look at the average official celebrity website tells the whole story.

Taking a look at the links list on starletlinks.com already tells you one thing; a lot of young celebrities don’t even have an official website. And I’m not counting myspace pages because for me those don’t really count, it’s rather effortless to set up one of those.

Taking a browse through the pages that are linked get from bad to worse. Take llrocks.com for example; Lindsay Lohan’s official website. To start of with you get a small intro with a single from her newest single from the album Speak. Call me crazy but I could have sworn her last album released was called a Little More Personal. When you go further into the site it doesn’t get any better, the last update is from November 27th 2005. The design in general is very outdated and the info on the site is of course outdated as well. And leaving the journal section online is just pitiful, seeing the last entry is from October 15th 2003. It just shows that Lindsay and her management don’t seem to care about their online presence. So there was an effort at one point but there just isn’t any anymore.

New single? Maybe two years ago.

But there are also official pages that seem like never any effort went into it. Example Abigail Breslin; her website does mention her Oscar nomination but the design looks like it was done by an amateur, the rest of the website isn’t up to date at all. Saying that Abigail reads everything written on the forum would be a good example of a website with interaction from the actual celebrity. Only problem is that the forum doesn’t actually work. It’s pretty much the same story at Sofia Vassilieva; last update seems to be from 2003. Four years might not seem that much in some terms, but we’re talking about the career of a fourteen your old girls here. On the internet it’s the same; if a site hasn’t been updated in months it’s already deemed outdated.

That seems to be the general case with the websites that do exist. At one point they were up to date but at some point they just were left alone. The websites for Jessica Biel, JoJo and Thora Birch are pretty much the same. Though the website for Thora Birch is more or less up to date but the design just doesn’t work anymore for this day and age.

One site that isn’t even linked on starletlinks.com is Amanda Bynes her official website. It’s not linked for a good reason; it says “Under Construction?” with copyright 2000 at the bottom. So the domain was registered but nothing ever was done with the page. I have another big concern about that website, but I won’t say what.

A site I’m not really sure about is that of Emma Roberts, it basically only links to sites being updated by the companies she did work for (Columbia Records and Nickelodeon) but at least it gives the impression of a little effort being put in it and the general info on those is more or less up to date.

As with anything there are exceptions. Amber Tamblyn even has two official websites, one for her acting career and one for her endeavours as a poet. Both pages are quite modern and up to date and there even is a forum that actually works. She doesn’t seem to be active on the forum but it’s still there. Mandy Moore’s page is also an example of a page that is pretty much up to date.

The company that seems to have their things quite well in order is Disney. Ashley Tisdale and Miley Cyrus (both current Disney Channel stars) their websites are modern and up to date. Though Miley Cyrus her website is a bit awkward to browse through because of the magazine style lay-out, people really have to look for stuff if they want info. She actually has two websites but for the second one called Mileyworld requires registration and a yearly membership fee. The same approach can be found on the page of former Disney star Hilary Duff. For a yearly fee of $29.95 you get into the fanclub page.

An up to date official fansite. But is it worth $24.95?

I have no idea what you exactly get for those fees. There are things like forums on those pages but I have no clue on how active those actually are or if the celebrities themselves are active on them; I doubt they are. But are people willing to pay for access to a forum when there are free alternatives? I also don’t know what other kind of extras you actually get, but at least they’re making an effort in fan interaction. In this day of age this should come as a logical thing, fans want to have the feeling they can interact with their idols. Something simple as an online diary can do that, forums are also a good idea but you can’t expect celebrities to be very active on those.

In general the online presence for the young generation of celebrities needs a lot of improvement. If fans can’t even find an official page or only find a bad outdated one they will feel a bit ignored. The fans are still the people who make it possible for celebrities to do what they do. And an internet presence is just something that is part of that in this day of age; they’re part of the internet generation themselves after all.

written by: bvang

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under Abigail Breslin, Amanda Bynes, Ashley Tisdale, Editorials, Emma Roberts, Hilary Duff, Jessica Biel, JoJo, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Sofia Vassilieva, Thora Birch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.