A Billion Celebrities

The past couple of years I've been absolutely fascinated about the micro-celebrity. It's a phenomenon that has only really taken hold the past decade or so.

Things used to be when someone wrote a book or was a brilliant scientist, artist, or inventor they were celebrities. Then rich, wealthy, socialites became the new celebrities and their lavish parties. In the early days of Hollywood that changed and actors became celebrities after centuries of toil and being treated like nobodies. Come on, you know William Shakespeare but you never hear of the first actors who portrayed his work on stage.

Eventually radio and then TV came along which brought athletes into our homes and they also became celebrities. Rock n Roll was born and then we had another new generation of celebrities to add to the mix.

With the dawn of the internet we started to get the occasional trickle effect of an online celebrity, when broadband hit the floodgates opened. New sites popped up all over such as the always famous You Tube, Drudge Report, and the social sites My Space and Facebook. If Yahoo featured you somewhere then you had a certain amount of notoriety.

Jennicam became one of the biggest sites of it's day and it could be argued Jennifer Ringley was the biggest online celebrity of her time. I stumbled across a site called Talkspot once. It was just before broadband went nationwide when 56k was as fast as you could go. They featured a host, a camera on them, and a chat room.

It was interactive entertainment as you felt apart of the show. I followed Dan Schultz and Scott Wirkus to HitTheBeach.com and then over to Eyada.com to their eventual demise. I have Karen Kay, another host on my Facebook. They were ahead of their time and if the same thing were done again today with wifi everywhere and broadband internet on your phones it would have been a lot more successful.

Then along came Blip.TV and Justin.TV, live broadcasting was now possible to a vast audience. Now anyone with a webcam and a broadband connection could become their own microcelebrity. You find your niche and there is someone there and they are online broadcasting about it. It's that simple, I enjoy watching commentated Starcraft 2 replays and Day[9], HDStarcraft, and H to the Usky Husky are among the best in the game.

They are so good at it that they actually go to the tournaments and commentate live matches for the audience. They have carved out their own niche and they have viewers. People watch Funday Monday on Day[9]'s Blip site to the tune of 20,000 a cast. With that kind of audience you get to split the advertising revenue with Blip.

This is the dawn too, the next wave, whatever takes the place of Facebook or Justin.TV will be bigger and open up doors to another audience. People you know on a daily basis have no attachment to Hollywood celebrities anymore, you've got nothing in common with them.

You do have something in common with a guy broadcasting from his house with a webcam though. You live the same lifestyle, eat at the same kind of places, and pay your own bills. You can identify with that kind of person easier. You'll never live the lifestyle of Brad Pitt but it's possible to go to Best Buy and get your own webcam and start your own style of show.

If your material is good you'll get viewers, people will tell people. That's the way it works. Stay fresh and you can work your way up as the sky is the limit.

Hail the microcelebrity, may you live forever.