Move Over Superstars ... it's a Cyberstar era
In our era of increasing invidualized entertainment - mobile, broadband channel, web media portal, digital cable, DVR repeats, platform video games, online games, mobile games, etc, etc, what's an aspring actor, writer, producer, director, comedian, or animator to do?
Become a Cyberstar, that's what.
Cyberstars are not necessarily looking for sweeping fame or fortune. They're individuals with passion, creativity, a modicum of talent, and abolutely no inhibition. They don't want to necessarily want to unseat Tom Cruise or even Mark Burnett. A following of thousands will do just fine.
I wrote about some of these Cyberstars when dishing on YouTube (see You Tube Turns 100 ...). But creative types are producing content for a variety of different traditional & online mediums. And where once they didn't succeed, they try and try again.
Chris Anderson details this niche market entertainment phenom in the July issue of Wired. His article, "The Rise and Fall of the Hit" adapted from his recently published tome Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. He aptly points out that mass media and celebrity is actually a very new phenomonen. Pre-Industrial Revoluion we used to be segmented by geography. Now we're segmented by preference.
A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted some of these new cyberstars, including online Video Bloggers / Producers Amanda Congdon, Jeff Macphereson's TikiBarTV, and Kent Nichols & Douglas Sarine's Ask a Ninja.
But just as OM (that's Old Media) creates this list, it's already morphing with NM (New Media) players.
