The Super Stars of New Social Media

sanspeak writes "The Wall Street Journal profiles the Moguls of New Media. It's not about the entrepreneurs who have created these new media islands like MySpace, YouTube and such, but people who participate in it and make it successful." From the article: "As videos, blogs and Web pages created by amateurs remake the entertainment landscape, unknown directors, writers and producers are being catapulted into positions of enormous influence. Each week, about a half-million people download a comedic video podcast featuring a former paralegal. A video by a 30-year-old comedian from Cleveland has now been watched by almost 30 million people, roughly the audience for an average "American Idol" episode. The most popular contributor to the photo site Flickr.com just got a contract to shoot a Toyota ad campaign."

Comments

Of course

[Threni]

when TV companies stop showing their stuff in one region and sell it on the net, they'll have a global marketplace which'll make 30,000,000 people look pretty small.

Oh, and while I'm posting, I was thinking about social sites and privacy. If people are worried about people posting too much info on the net, and they're also worried about big brother style data mining of their details, why don't the sites respond by turning the typed text into graphics, displaying it as bitmaps, so that it can't be cut and pasted etc. You could use a subtle form of CAPCHA (or whatever it's called) encryption perhaps - nothing too hard to read - but even without it it would thwart casual searchability.

Re:Of course

[SCPRedMage]

If people are worried about people posting too much info on the net, and they're also worried about big brother style data mining of their details, why don't the sites respond by turning the typed text into graphics, displaying it as bitmaps, so that it can't be cut and pasted etc.

Probably has something to do with image files taking up a lot more space than text.

I have another question

[pimpimpim]

concerning youtube