Follow updates from only celebs you choose with Popeek
Popeek is a free app for iPhone that creates a personalized feed of Hollywood news tailored to you based on the celebrities you choose. When you select which people you're interested in, the app gathers links from Facebook and various news sources and puts them all in one place. It can even alert you of new updates as well.
The Popeek app doesn't have much to it. When you open the app for the first time and log in, more than a few familiar faces should appear in the Explore section. This is where you select which celebrities you want to follow in your main feed. There's the A-list names such as Beyoncé, Angelina Jolie, Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Katy Perry and then there's some lesser known folks like Lionel Messi and Bar Refaeli thrown in for some variety.
Right off the bat, I wasn't impressed with the number of celebrities available to follow in Popeek. In fact, I can actually count how many celebrities there are in total: 33. Considering just how many people in Hollywood there are and how much coverage sites like TMZ spews out every day, that's a very small number.
I selected a few celebrities at random to see what came up in my feed. It was a decently aggregated collection of Facebook posts, tweets and links from Hollywood websites like E! Online, Perez Hilton, Just Jared and some others. Each post comes with a like button, comment button and share button attached at the bottom for some social flair. Posts in Popeek like tweets actually just pull the number of favorites the tweet has into the app, so it's not just exclusive engagement from Popeek users. However, if you do like something in the app, it shows up in a collection of reverse chronological likes on your very own profile page.
Where Popeek fairs a bit better is on individual celebrity profiles. The My Peeks section lists the celebrities you're keeping up with, but tapping one will show only content from them. Even better, the menu to the right of the profile grants access to a fan wall where Popeek users post messages, tour dates, videos, a Wikipedia bio and a store. Unfortunately, the fan wall, tour dates and store sections replaced any meaningful content with a "Coming Soon!" banner.
Alerts in my experience were sporadic. I'm not entirely sure how the app chooses which news to alert you of, but I followed four celebrities and only received one alert in 24 hours for an insignificant news story involving Jennifer Lawrence.
Popeek seems like an app that's ripe for potential, but its limitations are too much of a hindrance to give it a wholehearted recommendation. The main problem is the severely lacking library of celebrities. If you're passionate about keeping up with a wide range of celebrity gossip, chances are you won't enjoy much of what this app has to offer because it's truly minimal right now. I'd say Popeek is worth revisiting a few updates down the road once the content is built up. If you don't want to wait, get it for free in the App Store.
