Online Fame: Reputation as a Motivating Factor

The admiration or even hatred of celebrity status is what drives people to invest their time, money and mindshare. In real life, celebrities influence us into buying, cloths, support political causes or even influence our lifestyle choices.


Robert Scoble and Shel Israel authors of Naked Conversations. Don't ask me how I found it.

In the online world, reputation has a habit of pushing a business forward. Communities like digg.com were pushed forward by former TV host Kevin Rose, colossus business failures like Seth Godin's Squidoo, or Mike Arrington's Edgeio were all given ampule amounts of leeway thanks to the creators reputation.

I personally follow an online community called 9rules simply because I think the founder has a great sense of humor and is a real stud but how does that relate to the rest of my online activities? It probably doesn't affect my buying habits nor does the profile on 9rules transfer over to site's like Amazon.com or Zappos. And while I don't invest any money into the business, I do invest a significant amount of time and mindshare.

So maybe there is value to online web celebs and the businesses that they run. I think when we look at a website like digg.com we not only look at the stories but we also look at the users/leaders involved and we want it to succeed. Digg a story on digg, and visit an article that talks about Kevin Rose and you're already helping him make his dollars.

I think that there is a valid business in supporting the chase of success. The Internet is such an effective/cheap tool for distribution that a single charismatic person could probably create his/her own successful website and in some cases a business. Not everyone would have to support him nor like him. Even the controversy surrounding a person could be enough to fuel the publicity and thus sustain attention around that person's product/business/service...just like the celebrities of old.

Sidenote: There's a really good podcast interview that might give you a better perspective on things. The internet is diverse and sometimes hard to understand. Click through and listen to the mp3.

Also sorry for the late post. The weekends are intense.