The great social sports site, Ballhype (which I’ve covered here and here) is getting ready to launch a new sister social entertainment news site: ShowHype (link not live yet).

The appeal of showbiz news on the Internet is undeniable – look no further than CBS’ acquisition of the 10-month-old Dotspotter for $10 million (that figure is disputed), along with the meteoric rises of PerezHilton and TMZ. The Internet and celebrity gossip seemed fused together at times as if they were meant to be one.

While I’ve made it no secret that celebrity gossip isn’t exactly my cup of tea, ShowHype does offer redeeming regular entertainment stories that the other sites do not – namely in movie trailers (a favorite past time of mine), music videos, and most importantly to me a ‘Charts’ area. In this area you’ll find the top grossing movies of the previous week, the most watched television shows, and the top selling albums. I’d really love to see something here in the vein of Ballhype’s ‘Games’ area where you can pick the winners of each sports game each week and your picks are tallied and a score given – for ShowHype I’d love to see a BoxOfficeMojo-type box office projection game. Something that could maybe even eventually work it’s way into a Hollywood Stock Exchange rival.

If you’ve used Ballhype, you immediately know how to use ShowHype. Story submission is easy, so far you have the option to post in either ‘Movies’, ‘Television’, ‘Music’, ‘Celebrity’, or ‘Other’. You can also create your own original story right on the site or create a poll.

All of what makes Ballhype great – namely the ability to get sports stories and opinions from actual fans out there rather than everything being from ESPN and CNNSI – is something that has a lot of potential here if it can be replicated in the entertainment news arena. If you’re at all into celebrity or entertainment, I’d definitely check ShowHype out – and I can certainly see the team pumping out more spin-offs – you know I’d be down for some TechHype, but perhaps that field is already too crowded, so I’ll settle for some BeerHype.