This entry was posted on
Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at
8:48 am and is filed
under Teh Interwebs.

Scotsman – Gawker ‘stalker map’ tracks celebs: A row is brewing in New York over a new website that can publish details of celebrity sightings in the city within minutes – complete with a map pinpointing exactly where the star was spotted. Popular gossip site Gawker.com’s “stalker map” uses the Google map service to plot the location of the famous face as soon as possible after the tip comes in. Some readers even send in their spots straight away from their BlackBerry email devices and two interns have been employed to sift through the messages, so close to real-time tracking movie stars, such as Julia Roberts, is possible.

This post contains a typical explanation/disclaimer from Gawker.com: Sightings are sent in by readers and fact-checked by no one. Some may, yes, be fabricated – it’s up to you to smell a rat. A reminder: Mapped pinpoints are posted anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of hours from when readers first send them in, which provides an ample window for celebrities to move about before facing certain death exacted by their violently obsessive fans.

I’d like to think that there’s a clear difference between this and keeping a ruthless, sadistic maniac off the streets…. but do correct me if I’m wrong.