Physically, we have no idea (but we hope it’s somewhere safe and comfortable). Virtually, you’re in Pop Salad, a celebrity gossip news feed, discussion forum and game all in one.
In other words, you’ve hit the guilty pleasure jackpot.
For all of those who want to prove their celebrity know-how, Pop Salad also offers a gaming element. We assign prices to celebrities all day long based on how often they’re being talked about on the Internet right now. The more buzz there is around a celebrity, the higher his or her price will go, and when the buzz drops, the price drops.
Your gaming mission, should you choose to accept it: Use the free Cheddar in your account to invest in celebrities before they go up in price, then sell them for a profit. If you don’t want to wait to fill all of your crew slots, you can also purchase some Green.
The players who do the best in the game are always paying close attention to what’s going on in celebrity gossip — on Twitter, TV, in magazines, blogs and of course, right here in Pop Salad.
Your crew is the “invest low, sell high” game of Pop Salad. If you think a celebrity is about to get a lot of press, invest in them and they’ll be added to your crew. Then keep an eye on those people and sell them when their price goes up. Just make sure you’re investing ahead of the curve!
You will also get up-to-the-minute news about the celebs you have in your Crew in the Activity.
Friends is your group of friends in Pop Salad. You gain Friends by following other users and encouraging others to follow you.
On the Friends tab, you can see who’s following you, who you’re following, and who your friends are.
When you follow someone, updates they make to their Crew and their interactions with news will show up in your Activity.
There are lots of reasons to build a list of Friends in Pop Salad. You may want to follow someone because you think their comments are funny or interesting, or because you notice you’re fans of the same celebrities. We’ve also found it’s fun to follow our real-life friends so we’re always on the same page about the latest celebrity news — they never get the scoop before we do! If you’re trying to get better at the game, you may also want to follow someone who’s been making good investments so you can watch what they do.
When you follow someone and they follow back, you’ll see them in your Friends. Otherwise, you’ll see them as your Followers or as people you’re Following.
We wouldn’t want you walking into a party alone, so when you first join Pop Salad, you’re automatically friends with the people who work here, as well as a few of our very first users. We’re a friendly bunch, but if you want to un-follow us, our feelings won’t be hurt.
You can find new people to follow by inviting your friends to join Pop Salad or searching for them at the bottom of the Friends tab. You can also watch who else is commenting on the stories you’re interested in and find new people to follow that way. If you want to follow players who are doing really well in the game so you can improve, check the leaderboards and follow new people from there.
Activity is your customized celebrity news feed. In it, you’ll see the latest headlines about all of the celebrities you care about, whether you’ve invested in them for your Crew or you’ve added them to Celebs I Follow.
When you follow other players, you’ll also get to see the stories they’ve liked and commented on, as well as updates on which celebs they’ve invested in and sold. This is your chance to voice your opinion and converse with other celebrity fans!
Other than a grammatically incorrect sentence, the above is the set of celebrities you want to hear about. Your Activity, or customized news feed, will be composed of news about the celebs that you choose to follow (along with those in your crew and the Pop Salad users you may follow). You can follow an infinite number of celebrities — just click Follow!
You’ll get $2000 in Cheddar for every day you sign in to Pop Salad. With some smart investing, that can turn into $100,000 in just a few hours! If you find yourself out of Cheddar, just sign in tomorrow and you’ll have some more to work with. Pro tip: That $2000 daily bonus increments upward with successive daily sign-ins. Be sure to sign in every day to watch that bonus rise.
If you want more Cheddar and you want it now, you can click Earn Cheddar to complete affiliate offers.
Keep in mind you can also purchase Green if you’d like to open more crew slots in order to make more investments.
We originally asked Tom Arnold to do it. We figured that would work out nicely since he’s up all night anyway.
When he declined our offer, we wrote a computer program for it. We call this program Dressing. All day and night, Dressing scours the Internet, reading celebrity news websites and taking notice of which celebrities they mention.
Dressing also notices things like how important the celeb’s name seems in an article (is it in the headline or is it buried in the middle?), how trusted is the source is (is it CNN or is it one of those weird splinter blogs about Perez Hilton’s dog?), and how recent the news is.
Lastly, Dressing looks at how valuable a celebrity was an hour or a day ago. Are they constantly in the news, like LiLo or Kim K, or is the fact that they made big news a big deal?
Dressing uses all that information to assign a value — their Cheddar score, which you see on their card.
It’s a game of predicting news, so no one knows for sure — not even the people who work here!
The best way to learn when to invest and when to sell is to do it a few times. You may lose or you may win — but you’ll get a better understanding of how it works.
You should invest in a celebrity when you think they’re going to see an increase in press coverage in the future. Perhaps they have a movie or an album coming out soon, or a birthday coming up, or a wedding or a due date or a court date or… well, you get it.
But not everything in the celebrity news world has a date, right? Celebs can see sudden jumps in price around unexpected scandals, sexy photos and shocking quotes. When you’re the first to hear about those, there’s a lot of cheddar to be made in Pop Salad. Pro tip: You can use a Double Down to double your return.
Once a story’s already as big as it’s gonna get, it’s usually too late to make a profit on that celeb. If Dressing sees a decrease in new stories about a celeb, it will slowly start to decrease that celeb’s value. It’s not a perfect science — but often checking a celeb’s price graph on their detail page can give you some insight into whether or not they’ve already peaked.
We’ve found the best way to get a sense of this is just to play, play and play some more. The more experience you have with the game, the better you’ll understand when to invest and when the celeb has probably already peaked.
Now that’s the tricky part, isn’t it? If a celeb in your crew has gained value, do you cash out or wait to see if it goes even higher? That’s really just a matter of how much of risk-taker you want to be.
If your celeb is losing value, do you hang on longer to see if they’ll go back up, or do you cut your losses before you lose even more? Pro tip: You can use a Do Over to ignore a loss at the time of a sale.
Again, it’s a question of how much risk you want to take, and how much information you have. Some media mainstays will almost always go back up eventually (when we don’t want to have to think too hard about it, we just invest in Lindsay Lohan), and some may not see their name in the press again for months or years… then again, another media rush might be coming in a matter of hours.
If it were too easy, it wouldn’t be any fun, right?
Each week — and soon, each day too — Pop Salad tracks how much Cheddar players gain in the game. At the end of each contest, prizes are awarded to the winners. Check out the Cash Contests FAQ for more information and specific rules.
We always want to have the best and most relevant celebrities available for investing. If we’re missing a celeb you want to add, the fastest way to make that happen is to tweet us @popsalad with the celeb’s name. If you’re not on Twitter, you can email us at moc.dalaspop@kcabdeef. Please note: Celebrities who are already deceased are not eligible to be added.
If you know of a website or blog focused on general entertainment/celebrities that is updated regularly (like, daily) with awesome, original editorial content, send an email to moc.dalaspop@kcabdeef with the blog’s name and URL. Our editors make final decisions about which sources are added. If you are submitting your own blog, please note that our editors are mysteriously friendly to blogs that link prominently to Pop Salad.
