The New Star Maker Machinery

       I was a free man in Paris
       I felt unfettered and alive
       I'd go back there tomorrow
       But for the work I've taken on
       Stoking the star maker machinery
                        - Joni Mitchell


We've been a celebrity obsessed culture for over half a century. But until recently, fame was largely it's own reward. The stars were richer than most, but the machinery that today catapults America's top celebs to stratospheric wealth was largely absent. That changed in the 1970s with the emergence of the Big 4 talent agencies: CAA, William Morris, ICM, and UTA. In that decade, people like David Geffen -- the "Free Man in Paris" Joni Mitchell sings about -- turned famous people into platforms that could become both vehicles for brand messaging, and brands themselves.


Fast forward 35 years, and we all get a shot at something resembling fame thanks to the social web. Microcelebrity. Even though the term was coined just a few years ago, it's now almost passe to speak of how it's become lifestyle for so many. At SXSW last year, Chris Anderson advised the audience to "Create microcelebrity and then monetize it." 


This time around, there's no man behind the curtain. Microcelebs are their own agents. Will "fame" be payment enough for the long tail? Or will they want some of that "monetize" stuff too?


The "create" part is fun. Services like Facebook and Twitter provide the fundamental plumbing. Apps like foursquare help us sustain microcelebrity by sharing interesting data about what we do in realtime, and even give us points and badges to keep score. Facebook photos have been one of the key vehicles by which the frat presidents, cheerleading captains, and party animals among us have achieved microcelebrity, and hence emerging services like Photocheck.in are interesting to me.


Where it gets scary is the "monetize" part.  The old answer of "it isn't tacky for celebrities to get paid for promoting stuff because they are different from the rest of us" does not work if celebrities are no longer very different from the rest of us.


We are now entering a new wave of self-service star maker machinery that will provide low touch and scalable ways for people to monetize their microcelebrity if they chose to.  Ad.Ly, Izea, and presumably Blippy [soon] all provide influencers with a form of monetization in exchange for sharing. Analytics tools help us fine tune the content we create to maximally delight our audiences. New web series UnderTheArch selects a group of popular NYU students each season, furnishes them with product placements, and films them at sponsor locales. When I spoke at Southern Methodist University last week, I was asked for advice on how to start a similar initiative there. 


The trickle down of celebrity has societal implications we've only begun to understand. It is exciting, but potentially dangerous.