"You get a photo of it and, what do you do with it?" Mr. Osher asked The Observer. Well, put it on the Internet, of course! "The average person gets a photo of a celebrity and they save it to their desktop, they email their ten best friends and family, maybe they put it on their social networking site like Facebook and the story dies there," Mr. Osher explained. He decided to help keep these real-life encounters alive by creating MeetTheFamous.com—a site that enables its users to become their own celebrity blogger. Its tagline: "MeetTheFamous.com: Where YOU Are the Paparazzi."

"What I want to do is provide a home for these people," Mr. Osher, the site’s creator and chief executive, told The Observer from his Fifth Avenue office. "Instead of the story just dying on their desktop, is to share their encounter, share their experience, share their photos with the world and get paid for it."

At MeetTheFamous.com, users can create a profile and upload their own pictures and videos of celebrities. The site has signed an exclusive partnership with a top photo agency (Mr. Osher declined to disclose the name of the agency) to license and sell their photos to sites like TMZ and Just Jared and magazines like InStyle. Whatever the photo agency sells, users receive 50 percent of the commission through PayPal. Also, MeetTheFamous.com staffers choose several posts to be featured on the site's home page every day. Users who create those featured posts get a $25 bonus.

For "Jenny from Idaho who has never seen a celebrity in her whole life," Mr. Osher said, she can become their "own Perez Hilton," by blogging about photos posted on the site. There’s also a Celebrity Trivia game and a Celebrity Clue game that offers daily and weekly cash prizes. Features like Celebrity Closet also note the brand names of the clothing celebrities have on and where users can snag that skirt for themselves. The site also ranks the "most popular paparazzi" (based on profile views) and the best money-making "top paparazzi."

Launched in mid-October 2008, the site (which is funded by V.C's s in New York, Ohio, Connecticut and Chicago) has collected more than 16,000 photos of photos submitted by its 5,000 users. Headlines include: "Nicolas Cage Does a Hairplug Check"; "Lady Gaga Gets Horny On Stage"; and "Scarlett (Johansson) is one Transtastic Starlet." Mr. Osher said some of the most interesting submissions include one of Gerard Butler—the Hulk-like actor who played a king in 300. An old acting classmate submitted a photo of him looking much thinner, with floppy hair and a nerdy look. Mr. Osher said publishers were clambering to create a "before and after" feature with the picture.

Another was submitted by a tattoo artist of his recent work on Rihanna—two guns on her ribcage. "This was picked up by Extra TV and TMZ was on it," Mr. Osher said.

Mr. Osher came up with the idea for the site from his cubicle. "Just like the next person, I love the celebrity news and the celebrity gossip and I found myself going to these blogs," Mr. Osher said. "But there was never anything to do there. I was always, 15 seconds and I'm done, I'll wait for the next story to come. I always wanted more."

"If someone posts something like Madonna was spotted at a Starbucks at 43rd and 2nd at 9 a.m., what am I supposed to do with that? Am I supposed to sit at Starbucks the next day and wait for her?"

Mr. Osher said users can bank on getting photos that even the paparazzi can't get. Most celebrities know when paparazzi are watching and act accordingly. But if undercover, everyday folks are camera-ready with their iPhones, what will MeetTheFamous.com users catch them doing next?

For example, Mr. Osher used to live in Los Angeles and was "'attempting' to be an actor," he wrote in an email. He had a small part in the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring then-undercover lovers Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. "I filmed a scene with only Brad and Angelina when the whole rumors of 'are they hooking up or not' were swirling around. If I had a camera phone back then, let's just say I could have taken a photo that would have been in all the celebrity magazines the next day. Unfortunately, there wasn't a place like MeetTheFamous.com to go and post the photo to back then."

Perhaps most MeetTheFamous.com users won't be so lucky and many of their submissions will capture celebrities going about their daily routines—getting coffee, picking up dry cleaning, picking their noses. But for some reason we’re just as obsessed with those pictures as the scandalous shots—just pick up an issue of In Touch for proof.

"Celebrities are everyday people," Mr. Osher continued. "They take their kids to school, they walk their dogs, they go to restaurants, they cheat on their spouses and they get in fights. And they're not ghosts. People see them on an everyday basis."

Mr. Osher might consider geo-targeting and mobile applications for MeetTheFamous.com. But for now he and his five other staff members, are focusing on getting the product right, building partnerships, and "'getting out into the mainstream,' of course," Mr. Osher added. "It has to get to the point where people are like, ‘I gotta get a picture on MeetTheFamous.'”

First up, Vanity Fair, which enlisted The Times' Maureen Dowd to profile Ms. Fey, whom the magazine's cover trumpets as "A New American Sweetheart!" (Punctuation theirs.) The magazine's Web site also features one of those behind-the-scenes videos of Ms. Fey's photo shoot that all magazines' Web Editors are convinced Internet users love. (In an example of too-weird-to -ignore/too-geeky-to -explicate life imitating art, a very Maureen Dowd-like character played by Christine Lahti once wrote a profile of the protagonists' of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a show, like Ms. Fey's 30 Rock, set behind the scenes of a sketch comedy show very much like Ms. Dowd's launchpad, Saturday Night Live.)

Ms. Dowd's story was dutifully picked up by The Daily News, The New York Post (whose Page Six also had an item about Ms. Fey today), and The Associated Press, and TMZ. (Apparently a lot of people have been wondering why Ms. Fey has a scar on her face.)

Also out today, The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin's take on Ms. Fey's show, about which she writes:

Ms. Franklin also manages to get a quick shot in at Ms. Fey's former 'Weekend Update' co-anchor Jimmy Fallon, whom she calls "a comic nonentity" who "will inexplicably take over the plum Conan O’Brien spot on NBC when O’Brien prematurely takes over the 'Tonight Show' from Jay Leno next year."

Any minute now, we expect The Daily Beast's Tina Brown to call for Ms. Fey to host Meet the Press or become a part of President-elect Obama's cabinet.

Ms. Winfrey's statement was made on the heels of a Drudge Report report that "Oprah's staff is sharply divided on the merits of booking Sarah Palin..."

Here's what Ms. Winfrey told TMZ:

Things really have gotten out of control over at TMZ.com. They’ve just posted a live streaming link at the departures curb at LAX. “Can we spot Best Actress winner Marion Cotillard before she jets back to France? Watch and find out.” Though it looks like the most exciting thing their cam will catch is a frustrated skycap flipping the bird to a bad tipper, something tells us that a sad chunk of people will actually follow the gossip blog’s advice and remain glued to the mundane comings and goings at the international hub. Oh…wait…is that Owen Wilson getting out of a white stretch Escalade? Gotta run!

In the midst of his rant, he accuses TMZ.com managing editor Harvey Levin of abusing the freedom of information act by subpeoning Mr. Mayer's thoughts—specifically the ones he had on September 14, 2007.

“The reason I’m so worried about this night is that I had a little bit too much to drink that night and I fell asleep with the gay network Logo on,” he told them with a straight face, pausing to look at the ground for a few moments. “A lot of dreams were had that night and if they ever get out, they represent a very small fraction of my day.”

Yesterday’s news that Us Weekly blogger Noelle Hancock (a former Observer staffer) is jumping ship to the soon-to-relaunch PageSix.com got us thinking about what the Post’s plans are for the new Web site. (We understand that the Post—through photo editor Dave Boyle; not Page Six editor Richard Johnson—has made offers to at least five Us staffers, though Ms. Hancock is the only one to jump ship thus far.) Gawker reported that the site is trying to staff up, especially on the West Coast, where TMZ currently has a stranglehold on the minutiae of what goes down every night at Les Deux.

However! A quick glance at the Nielsen/NetRatings stats for the past three months shows that the only site that’s shown growth is People.com, which had 6.5 million unique U.S. visitors in September, up by more than 1.5 million since July. TMZ’s growth appears to have stagnated in the same time period, though that site’s traffic still dwarves People’s: In July, TMZ recorded nearly 10.3 million visitors, which dipped to 9.4 million in August and jumped back up to July levels in September. By contrast, UsMagazine.com’s traffic has stagnated at around the 1 million mark since July, and Perez Hilton’s uniques have gone from 2.4 million in July to 2.2 million in September.

Taken together, the numbers point to what can only be a worrying trend for celebrity news and gossip sites: there is, perhaps, some audience fatigue. TMZ recently laid off one of its New York-based staffers, who was writing for the Web site; this staffer was told that the site was restructuring. Of course, TMZ also has its own successful venture in TMZ TV, for which Web site managing editor Harvey Levin serves as executive producer. Mr. Levin created the tabloid TV show Celebrity Justice in 2002, and some have speculated that since the show was canceled in 2005, Mr. Levin has been plotting his triumphant return to tabloid TV—an outlet that is ultimately much more lucrative than a Web site. Still, a TMZ spokeswoman told us that both the TV show and the website will continue moving “full steam ahead” for the foreseeable future.

Mr. Levin told Media Mob, “Page Six is a force in this genre. There’s plenty of interest in the material and room for more successful ventures.” Sure there is!

A Post spokesman said he would have no comment about the paper’s plans for the Web site.

The relaunch of PageSix.com is just the latest brand extension of the Post’s namesake gossip column—Page Six Magazine launched in September—and others in the industry are wondering whether the paper is spreading itself too thin.

“I think you take one look at [Page Six Magazine] and you realize their ability to expand beyond the column is probably not as much of an imminent threat as one might think,” said an editor at a competitor. Page Six head Johnson does not oversee the magazine and, sources say, will also not be in charge of the website. After last week—when Johnson threatened New York magazine writer Vanessa Grigoriadis with rape for daring to write that his column had been “emasculated”—that might not be such a bad thing. After all, this brand extension could be the Post’s way of insuring that Page Six will go on, even if the currently embattled Mr. Johnson leaves the paper.

Whether the site will actually make an impact in the gossip landscape, however, is still an open question. For a site that’s long relied on a network of tipsters and cozy relationships with P.R. executives eager to get their clients’ names in the column, the new, cutthroat brand of celebrity gossip must have come as a bit of a shock to the system—and it’s clear that the paper is still figuring out how to deal with it.

Vibe

Ari Horowitz spent his weekend at the beach. He has a house in Waterville, and on Saturday he rented a boat for a while, called The Queen Bee, and went out with a bunch of pals.

Over on Shelter Island, Mr. Horowitz, who is the new president of Vibe magazine, bared his buff torso to the salty winds. He was clad in red surfer shorts and wraparound shades.

“If you want to meet—you wanna reach—African-American males, it’s really the only platform you can get to,” he said, leading The Transom to think for a quick second that Mr. Horowitz intended to convert the magazine into a dating service.

“We think we can do what Rolling Stone did with Vibe: make it more of a lifestyle brand,” Mr. Horowitz said. “It should be the MySpace of the hip-hop world.”

The publisher had a posse with him, a clutch of friends, all colored by the sun, that included Goldman Sachs manager Buck Ratchford, an investor in the Vibe venture.

One of the gang walked out into the water with his cellphone in his pocket. “I’m such an idiot,” he said.

“It’s great people there, too,” Mr. Horowitz said of Vibe. “We got great people. We’ll see. Really, really good people. That’s what I’m the most psyched about—the people there are really, really solid. They’ve been incredibly receptive to having me and Eric show up. My partner Eric Gerber. ’Cause they want some life. They know we’re gonna—we’re not gonna walk in there with the attitude that we know the space. We don’t. We can’t. But we’re there to support them and create an environment where they can really succeed.”

By the Tuesday following the weekend, 20 Vibe staffers would be laid off.

—Nicholas Boston

Sucker-Punched

The party had a dress code, so men wore white, blondes wore pink and brunettes wore light blue. R. J. Williams—a child actor who worked on Magnum, P.I., Punky Brewster, General Hospital and Baywatch—would soon be turning 29.

The party, on Saturday, July 8, began as dinner for 200. It was catered by Katana at Mr. Williams’ uncle’s house north of Sunset, on Loma Vista Drive, a tucked-away, bosky Beverly Hills stroll.

Around 10 p.m., 600 more of Mr. Williams’ less-good friends began to arrive. The tennis court served as a dance floor. The bar pushed the Young Hollywood Margarita—it has zero calories.

By 2 a.m., capacity had been reached. “It was crazy,” said an attendee. “Even huge stars were getting turned away at the door. Tom Brady, Matthew McConaughey and Lance Armstrong were all waiting to get in, when a doorman told them they couldn’t let anymore guys in without girls.” Other attendees confirmed the snubs. N.B.A. stars Kevin Garnett and Shawn Marion were also turned away at the door.

Joe Francis, the businessman of Girls Gone Wild fame, was inside, however. But he wasn’t happy with all the other guests. “He grabbed this girl by the hair and was like, ‘Get the fuck out of here. This is my best friend’s party and I don’t want you here,’” said a witness. “Then her blond friend”—the source did not recall whether she was wearing pink, as per the dress code—“punched him in the eye with her BlackBerry.”

The girl and Mr. Francis had met before. She said some pretty heavy things about him.

The Beverly Hills Police Department already had six patrol cars and several motorcycles outside. Mr. Francis fled to them. Backup arrived: a fire truck, an ambulance and a K-9 unit.

Some footage from the scene outside the party was posted on TMZ.com. In that video, Mr. Francis can be heard repeatedly making the point that the “mitigating factor is my eye” and “we’ll let it be decided in court.”

Mr. Francis then got into his sparkly blue Bentley and drove off into the night. But the damage had been done. The police shut down the party.

“He did not lay a hand on her,” a representative for Mr. Francis said. “Joe would never do something like that.” His representative also provided a witness of his own, by the name of Nicole, who insisted that the “very pretty blond girl” had come “out of nowhere and sucker-punched Joe twice in the face.”

—Spencer Morgan

Beach

At the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America (ACRIA) Dance at Sunset, held at the restaurant of Sunset Beach on Shelter Island on Saturday, the attendees included Vanity Fair’s Bob Colacello; artists Ross Bleckner and Eric Freeman, along with dealer Mary Boone; Kim Cattrall; banker Euan Rellie, with wife Lucy and tyke Heathcliff, architect Campion Platt; and a bronzed André Balazs, Sunset Beach’s owner.

“I was just in France,” Mr. Balazs said. “I was just visiting my father, who lives in Saint Tropez.” He is, as everyone knows, of Hungarian descent. Also in attendance that day was a lesser-publicized, if amply exposed, female product of Budapest: a dark-haired former model by the no-surname moniker of Anna Blanca.

“Oh, that dramatic black dress?” Mr. Balazs said with a rise. “No, I don’t know her. I saw her, but I don’t know her.”

Earlier, Debbie Harry had performed, setting off a minor pedestrian traffic jam along narrow Shore Road.

“They’re a bit desperate for entertainment out here,” Ms. Harry said as she prepared to be driven off in a black stretch limo. “Just kidding.”

Cygalle Dias spent the weekend zipping around Southampton in something called a “smart car,” imported from Europe. The vehicle is about the height and length of an average two-seater American car’s door. It’s meant to save gas, but it also gives the rider a vague sense of being on the Continent. So says Ms. Dias, who used the boutique car (chauffeur-driven, of course) to get her to Saturday evening’s Parrish Art Museum benefit, and later the Cain nightclub, where hopefuls waiting in front of the velvet ropes whooped their approval at the sight of the diminutive vehicle.

“I just want to take care of people,” said Ms. Dias, whose first of several “healing spas”—so many new terms to assimilate—was held on Sunday at Cain House, the freshly launched Hamptons playhouse affiliated with the nightclub of the same name.

“Is that weird?”

Rosario Dawson was the hostess of the event. Deep-tissue massages were performed on party-weary weekenders before their late-afternoon drive back to Manhattan. Ms. Dawson was accompanied by her mother, Isabelle, with whom she’d partied until nearly 2 a.m. the night before at Cain—the club, not the house—and her uncle Gus Vasquez, a comic-book artist. Ms. Dawson herself is the model for a crime-fighting heroine in a new comic book named O.C.T.: Occult Crimes Taskforce.

“If you had a superpower, what would it be?” she said. “Could you fly, could you space-travel, could you talk to animals, could you have healing touch, could you read people’s minds, could you be invisible?

“My boyfriend for sure would want to fly,” she said. Ms. Dawson lives with the actor Jason Lewis, who played Smith Jerrod on Sex and the City. Mention of him turned her mind from sci-fi.

“I love it when I meet some chick who comes up and she says, ‘I love your boyfriend!’ I’m like, ‘Thanks—me, too! Back off!”

—N.B.