TheGrio’s 100: Fred Mwangaguhunga, if gossip’s on the menu, he delivers

TheGrio's 100 - Gossip is big business and few know that better than MediaTakeOut.com founder Fred Mwangaguhunga...

Feb 1, 2010

Video produced by Todd Johnson>

Gossip is big business and few know that better than MediaTakeOut.com founder Fred Mwangaguhunga. Since launching in 2006, MediaTakeOut.com has become the leading urban gossip site and ranks in the top 400 of all U.S. sites, according to Alexa.com.

Outranking better branded sites such as BlackVoices.com, Essence.com and BET.com, respectively backed by media conglomerates AOL, Time-Warner and Viacom, is a major coup. Mwangaguhunga now boasts as many as 6 million unique users a month.

Breaking news of the Chris Brown-Rihanna assault, announcing Mariah Carey’s relationship with Nick Cannon, and declaring that Michael and Juanita Jordan would divorce are just a few of the exclusives MediaTakeOut.com has claimed.

Mwangaguhunga was born in Washington, D.C. to Ugandan parents. He received his M.B.A. and J.D. from Columbia University and got his first taste of the internet’s financial potential working for an online telecommunications company while still in school.

Putting both of his graduate degrees to use, Mwangaguhunga worked as a corporate tax attorney for Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton from 2001 to 2004 before creating The Laundry Spa, an online laundry service he later sold. Marketing and promoting that business with limited dollars, Mwangaguhunga turned to blogs.

Convinced that the Internet would continue as a viable business option, the serial entrepreneur explored the blog business. Originally conceived as a general interest site, MediaTakeOut.com switched gears after noticing a tremendous spike in numbers for the site’s urban entertainment coverage.

Mainstream outlets left a void by not covering many black celebrities who were of interest, and MediaTakeOut.com capitalized on that. According to mid-January 2010 numbers from Website Shadow, which measures digital traffic and calculates value, MediaTakeOut.com was worth $2.8 million, generating almost 6 million daily page views and over 270,000 unique daily visitors.

The site also boasts over 650,000 registered users, many of whom regularly share their opinions.
Not everyone is sold on the tabloid-styled web site. Online petitions to remove it as well as criticisms and accusations of misinformation from celebrities and publicists are not uncommon.

Gossip, however, is going nowhere and neither is MediaTakeOut.com. Eyeing the success of TMZ.com, MediaTakeOut.com is prepared to ride this 21st century business model well into the future.

Article written by Ronda Racha Penrice>