Bob's Chicks

 

 

Britney Spears

 

I've spent about 4 1/2 months in the search for Britney Spears' sites and my quest is at an end. Using a number of search engines, webrings and link pages I found over 2700 unique sites with references to Britney. Just a simple review using most search engines lists 1000s of sites, but quite a few of them have little or nothing to do with Britney or are different pages of the same site. I intend to list the top sites that contain, in my opinion, the best material about Britney.

Update (25 October 2000): I've come to realise it will take me quite some time to review 2700 sites, even if a large number of them are small and created by beginners [Bob's never one to overlook the obvious -ed]. I've decided to list the sites I've already found that I think are better than most and have a definite appeal. I will add several sites per week until the review is completed and then re-evaluate the sites for Top 10 qualities.

So without further ado, here's the start of my list of great Britney Spears sites.

 

Britney Spears

 

My primary focus in bookmarking sites were those that have pictures of Britney or something that caught my eye. During my search I came to believe that Christina Aguilera is prettier and has a better voice, but Britney has a body that appeals to men at a more primitive level as described by Desmond Morris in the Human Animal - Britney is desirable as a mate and her body suited to child-bearing. I hope her recent appearance on the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards is not the direction she plans to take - I would prefer her much better with a fuller figure than the skin and bones of Christina. We will always have pictures to look back on if she does.

Pictures from Rolling Stone magazine are probably the closest thing to softcore porn available to mainstream society. These pictures certainly are eye-catching and figure highly in the sites I will choose. I also found a number of sites with fake pictures of Britney that are really bad, but there is one picture that is very good and I will list this prominently.

Besides the top sites and the special mentions, I will list a number of Anti-Britney sites. It was interesting to note the number of sites that have closed, not because of pressure from fans, but because of lack of interest. There are also a number of sites where the web designers have changed their opinion and now like Britney. As with the Anti-Christina sites, there is quite a lot of profanity used by young girls who should not even know the words. I hope the girls will grow out of this and become proper young ladies, as old-fashioned as that sounds. And in that vein, what does God have to say about Britney.

I plan to have a section that includes sites with a religious bent. Does God like Britney? You betcha! Not that the religious right would have you believe. I'll have sites with both points of view.

News Flash: Apparently the rumours are true - national TV news channels reported on 19 September that Britney and Justin Timberlake are officially an item. Why this elicited national news coverage is anybody's guess.

Also in the way of important news... I was prompted to look again at the infamous "nipple slip" video and agree with others that the girl in the video is not Britney Spears. While she does look similar, she is in fact a European star named Arielle Dombasle. Those in the know say their nipples are also strikingly familiar, although Britney's have been adjusted for surgical reasons... If you don't believe me, believe the leader on the video clip that's circulating; it names the actress whose dressmaker failed her.

 

 

The Reviews

 

Addicted to Britney

Addicted to Britney This site is WACK! With news, media, original content and great style, this should be every Britney fan's start page. Launched at the end of September 2000, it appears to be the most complete and up-to-date site I've yet found. The latest news and gossip is presented for the past 10 days on the main page, from where the rest of the site is accessible. Site navigation is very easy using 6 pull-down menus: info, media, fans, fun, site and www.

The Info section is where all the details about Britney's life are maintained, like her biography and facts, discography, lyrics (more properly belonging in the Media section), tour dates, articles and news archives of news prior to the past 10 days (only news since the start of site development in September has been collected). Unique to this site is a short history of Britney's love life (none of the tawdry stuff), which I'm sure will grow and mature with Britney. The Info section is a great prelude for the Media section.

The Media section contains pictures, videos and sound clips plus some original wallpapers, themes and skins. Next to Britney4u, this site has the most pictures of any I've reviewed. The 1,841 thumbnails are displayed in 37 galleries, but in no particular order. I would prefer some sort of formal order to the pictures (i.e., all vidcaps together or the Rolling Stones pictures in one gallery), but they are thumbnailed and nicely formatted. (Note: There is some duplication and the thumbnails in Gallery 27 do not work, but the expanded images work just fine.) There are currently only three videos, but they expect to have their full library online in a couple of months. The full-length videos are from Britney's albums and in several formats - the RealPlayer videos are from Peeps Republic and the WindowsMedia versions are from a server I'm not familiar with, but the video is awkward while the audio is fine. The 12 soundclips are from Britney's "Oops! I Did It Again" album and are in RealPlayer and WindowsMedia formats.

As the site is new, the Fan section is low in content and needs fans to provide encounters and art and other things. One interesting area is Find a Fan, which has a list of fans already entered with whom one can perhaps begin a penpal relationship. The fan club is small at the moment and probably should be listed with the chat and message board areas in the Site section. The final two areas are for sending a postcard (Cool!) and competitions. Competitions are in the planning stages so I'm not sure what they're about.

Anyone interested in a little fun? There are games and puzzles and fun things you can do with a Nokia cell phone. The games include Concentration, Hangman and Tic-Tac-Toe. The Hangman game does not create a hanged man if you pick the wrong letters, but it's still interesting. Those familiar with Tic-Tac-Toe can usually win or come up with a tie. I prefer a jig-saw puzzle to the sliding puzzle found here, but again it's interesting. Besides the themes, ringtones (play Britney's songs on a Nokia cell phone) and battle of the pop singers, the remaining two areas probably belong in the www section: Britney Addicts Club for extraordinary sites and Adopt a Song.

The Site section mostly contains stuff related to the site, like the site map, FAQs, staff and mailing list. However, the message board and chat area are found here plus the guestbook and fun polls, like "Should Britney Spears be allowed to live alone?" (stalkers need not enter). This site is funded by income earned from merchandise sold through the site, which can be accessed from the main page or clicking on merchandise.

The final section contains mostly links and link information plus awards. The Site of the Month is worth a look, say once every 30 days.

Kudos to the staff who developed and maintain this excellent site for its originality, format and content. This site appears very professional with reason - it was designed by professionals: concept and content director Alex Halliday, graphical designer Olivia Repiso, head of technical development Sebastian Young and, searching for new content on the 'Net everyday, Edward "Slanesh" Bullen. My one critical comment is that I hope, as professionals, they will clean up the obvious typos and other errors.


Britney Spears NOW! This site not only has a great format, but is very well documented. This is most evident in the Videography section, which contains a list of all of Britney's music videos linked to separate pages that documents interesting details about the video and has links to the lyrics and vidcaps. Having all of this detail makes me curious as to why the webmasters have chosen not to include a single video clip. Audio clips are also conspicuously absent in the Discography section that contains a list of Britney's albums and singles with details about the different versions and links to the lyrics and scans. There are, however, several MIDIs available in the Music section. Lyrics for the songs on Britney's two albums are very well presented in the Song Lyrics section. I must say that the site has the largest collection of pictures of any site I've yet reviewed. There are over 9500 images, more than half of which are Miscellaneous Vidcaps, but also includes pictures from CDs, magazines, music videos and a huge collection of wallpapers. The site is kept current with the latest news about Britney (news is archived on a monthly basis) and contains lots of information, like a biography, small list of articles, calendar and tour dates and a well presented list of links to other Britney sites. Fans can talk about Britney in the Forum and download all sorts of themes, skins and screensavers. [added Jan 10, 2001]

Britney Fans A great source for Britney Fans, the site is kept current with the latest news about Britney (with archives maintained on a monthly basis) and has a large collection of audio and video clips (linked to other sites) and photos. The Photo Gallery is quite extensive with over 1500 pictures all nicely labeled and indexed into different categories, including magazines, appearances and award shows. There is also a separate gallery of Britney look-alikes sent to the webmaster of this site. The audio clips from the album Oops!...I Did It Again are linked to Britney ONLINE and most of the clips from ...Baby One More Time are linked to Peeps Republic. There are also some additional miscellaneous tracks. Most of the audio clips require the Real Audio Player. Song lyrics are listed separately in another section. The 30 video clips, including all of the music videos, are linked to various sites and are in a number of formats, from QuickTime to Windows Media Player. The audio and video clips are listed in the Multimedia section, which also contains Winamp skins, themes, a large collection of wallpapers and a Juke Box with 14 MIDI files of melodies from Britney's songs. Information about Britney is available with a detailed biography and Calendar (that looks very out of date) and fans can have a social exchange in the Chat Room and Forum. Finally fans can purchase Britney's music, posters and books via links to off-site stores. The site uses JavaScript, thus activating some pesky pop-up windows - just minimise and ignore them. [added Jan 10, 2001]

Britney Spears Addiction This site is run by an elderly (35) webmistress who likes Britney's music and thinks it's fun having a "girly" site. Britney Spears Addiction is primarily a picture site, but also contains audio and video clips plus a small selection of articles and interviews and not a few items regarding Britney's bad girl image, implants and corruption of millions of girls. The pictures number well over 1000 and are nicely indexed, but not all of them are displayed as thumbnails, instead as full pictures, sometimes in a horizontal scroll. Thankfully the webmistress has realised this is not good form and is working to change all of the pictures to thumbnails. Most of the pictures were scanned in by the webmistress, so some of them are probably unique to this site. Warning: Despite what you might read, there are some nudes tucked away in the back by Peter Paul Ruebens (No, not Pee-Wee Herman). [added Jan 10, 2001]

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