In October 2020, the TSR reported 21 million followers on their Instagram account. Nwandu no longer is the primary voice of the site, having stepped back to allow others participate. The high readership has drawn celebrity attention to The Shade Room and some have even participated directly on the site. The site now boasts more than 17 million followers and has since launched a new brand, The Shade Room Teens, that has 1.2 million followers. In June 2016, Cosmopolitan reported that The Shade Room's followers across platforms totaled more than eight million people. īy the end of 2015, the site was reported to have 2.6 million followers, although the company has less than a dozen employees. Readers of The Shade Room are called 'Roommates' because they 'live' in The Shade Room, some visitors return on a daily basis. The Shade Room refers to readers as 'roommates', who often provide leads on celebrities to The Shade Room personnel. Īfter getting established in the Instagram format, the site was then expanded to include community news, trending news, and user interaction. Nwandu found Instagram suited to her vision for The Shade Room due to its image-based format. Nwandu avoided the typical blog format in favor of publishing full-length stories on Instagram. The Shade Room has also been compared to MediaTakeOut with one exception, the majority of The Shade Room's news is reported primarily on Instagram. Nwandu lives and works from Los Angeles and employs a staff of five working on The Shade Room. 'Shade' in this case refers to a slang term for quips or wisecracks, especially those made with the intent of debasing their target(s). Instagram-based, The Shade Room offers celebrity and trending news on an hourly basis, predominantly within the African American community The New York Times called it the ' TMZ of Instagram'. The Shade Room (TSR) is a media company, founded by Angelica Nwandu in March 2014.

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