Guilty pleasures: 5 celebrity gossip sites revealed

Most folks don't want to admit it, so I'll lead the charge: I can't get enough of celebrity gossip sites.

Each day, I'll surf to my favorites and find out everything I wanted to know about Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and other celebs. It's my guilty pleasure. And by the looks of things, especially if we are to believe a post written by Perez Hilton's founder, which claims his site had 13.9 million page views Monday, I'm not alone.

So let's take a look at some of the prominent celebrity gossip sites across the Web and find out why they're so intriguing.

Defamer
Although Defamer was originally a separate entity under the Gawker Media umbrella, the company's founder and CEO, Nick Denton, announced recently that the site would become a section on Gawker.com to streamline business operations. And although it's not the most popular of the celebrity gossip sites, it's still worth visiting.

The content on Defamer is interesting, but I've found that it tends to be a little late in its reporting, and it's not nearly as compelling as sites like TMZ or Perez Hilton. In fact, despite its name, Defamer is decidedly "nicer" than the competition, and its tries to be more news-oriented than some sites that simply post pictures and comment on the way a particular celebrity looks.

I don't mind that Defamer has chosen to go that way, but as a major Perez Hilton fan, I enjoy the occasional snark.

Perez Hilton
If you haven't been to Perez Hilton to find out all the juicy details on A-list celebs like Angelina Jolie or D-list celebs like LC (Lauren Conrad) from "The Hills," you probably haven't spent enough time on the Web. Believe it or not, this site is, in its own strange way, a Web institution.

Rather than posting videos, a la TMZ, Perez Hilton boasts some of the funniest and most eye-popping stories on celebrities anywhere on the Web. The site is filled with pictures Perez finds of celebrities living their daily lives, which are then edited to include mean-spirited or (at times) nice comments. That said, many of the edits made to the pictures by Perez are adult in nature, so it's best if you read this blog when the kids are asleep.

Perez Hilton has been around for years, and the site's founder, Mario Lavandeira Jr., is one of the most hated people in Hollywood. He doesn't mince any words, and his blog posts, while short, are biting and shoot straight from the hip.

Unlike sites like Defamer, Perez often breaks big stories and has shots of celebrities hours before other gossip sites. Because Perez Hilton is the biggest site in the space, Lavandeira has been cited in a slew of lawsuits, and some celebrities criticize him, saying he goes easy on some and unnecessarily hard on others. He claims that he's tough on everyone.

Regardless, Perez Hilton is a must-see for celebrity watchers. The blog posts are sometimes serious, often funny, and always entertaining.

Posh24
Posh24 may not be one of the biggest celebrity gossip sites on the Web, and it's easily eclipsed by popular destinations like TMZ and Perez Hilton, but I still enjoy the different perspective it offers.

If you haven't been to Posh24, the site tries to offer the same experience as Perez Hilton: it shows a slew of pictures and brief posts below them. That said, it doesn't feature the same biting commentary you might expect from Perez Hilton. Like Defamer, the site is nicer in its postings.

Believe it or not, even though I love Perez Hilton, I like Posh24 because it is the nicer alternative. After a period of reading brutal Hilton posts, seeing the same stories (or pictures) offered in a nicer tone is a welcome change. That said, Posh24 doesn't have the same amount of coverage as Perez Hilton, which means that you may see the same faces more often than you might like.

The Superficial
The Superficial is all about pictures. And although it's not as popular as sites like Perez Hilton, it's the best place to find images of your favorite celebrities.

As soon as you get to the Superficial home page, you'll be shocked by the number and quality of pictures on the site. Believe it or not, it has more pictures displayed on its front page than Perez Hilton, and to the right of the posts, there are galleries ranging from "Gisele in a Bikini" to "Madonna's Chin Hair." Suffice it to say, the site has anything you're looking for when you want to look at your favorite (or least favorite) celebrities.

The Superficial takes an unapologetic look at celebrities. The site doesn't mince words, and it will capitalize on supposed celebrity weight gains or errors in judgment. It's not nice often, but it certainly is entertaining.

TMZ
TMZ, the AOL-owned celebrity gossip site, not only is one of my favorite destinations on the Web, but I also love to watch its television show, which features many of the same videos you'll find on its Web site.

It's TMZ's dedication to video that makes it an ideal destination for celebrity gossip seekers. Unlike Perez Hilton and the other sites in this roundup, TMZ relies heavily on video. Each day, there's a host of clips showing celebrities walking into restaurants in Hollywood or shopping in New York City. And each time, the TMZ camerapeople ask those celebrities baiting questions, trying to get something (anything) out of them.

It doesn't often work well. But there are times when you won't believe what some of these celebrities will do or say. On an almost daily basis, there's at least one celebrity who says something cringe-worthy, and every time, I'm left wondering why they would say such a thing on camera.

Regardless, I find value in TMZ because of those videos. Instead of pictures or stories that don't really tell you about celebrities, TMZ's videos give you an opportunity to see what they're like. You get a feel for whether they're nice people. More often than not, you'll find that they just don't want to be bothered, and they say nothing. Who can blame them?