We are doing a very exciting conference on July 23rd in Los Angeles, called EconCeleb, which will explore the business of celebrity and entertainment content online (and on mobile). It will be held at Roosevelt Hotel in the heart of Hollywood, and as our half-day conferences go, will be in the second half, from around 1PM-5PM. So save the date for now, go enter your name here for early notification on when ticket sales open, and we’ll have more details later. If you have ideas on topics or speakers ping me at rali AT paidcontent.org. For underwriting, ping our business side at advertising AT contentnext.com.

Meanwhile, at our EconSM conference earlier this week, I spoke to Alan Citron, GM of TMZ, the crazily popular celebrity news site and now a TV show.

Topics we talked about:
-- Role of AOL (NYSE: TWX) in TMZ.com’s growth
-- Philosophy of breaking news that TMZ has brought along to the industry
-- The changing role of publicists in Hollywood
-- Working with the paparazzi agencies
-- Rise of celebrity blogs and competition
-- Saturation in celebrity coverage
-- Advertising in a celebrity-driven environment

The 5 minute video interview is below.