*Boston University student *A.J. Vaynerchuck, left, Ben Huh, CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger?, center, and Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron chat at the Laughing Squid pre-ROFLCon party in Cambridge.
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- Internet memes are a dime a dozen, thanks to an oversaturated meme market. Create a quirky webcomic dedicated to dysfunctional office humor? Big deal. Have a hit viral video on YouTube? Who doesn't?
Welcome to the era of the microcelebrity –- where people become famous among small pockets of devoted followers. The real challenge isn't in racking up those pageviews, but in maintaining the buzz and eventually channeling viral wonders into a viable income. Unfortunately for net celeb wannabes hoping to quit their day jobs and rake in the dough, there isn't any easy formula for online success.
"It's a total crapshoot as far as who makes it and who doesn't," laughed Alice Marwick, a Ph.D. candidate at New York University who studies social status and hierarchy in Web 2.0 cultures."
The competition is only getting stiffer. "The number of potential cultural memes goes up in a straight line with the increase of internet population," said David Weinberger, a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society and author of The Cluetrain Manifesto?, a book on the economy of the internet. "More and more people online have great ideas and funny things to say."
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Orrin Zucker, co-creator and animator of wildly weird webshow It's JerryTime, hangs out in Cambridge.
The secret to making waves in an ocean brimming with memes-in-the-making lies in building a relationship with your audience. Interacting with fans is crucial, said Marwick. "That way, fans have a personal investment in their success –- and that works."
"If people love you, love 'em back," said Cheezburger, aka Ben Huh, CEO
of LOLcat site I Can Has Cheezburger? Huh, who was hanging out with fellow meme masters Thursday night in Cambridge at a pre-party for net celeb confab ROFLCon, gave a simple example of sharing the love, internet-style: He once sent a bouquet of tulips to a user who voluntarily cleaned up their wiki after net hooligans wreaked havoc on the site.
Huh, who recently purchased I Can Has Cheezburger? for an undisclosed sum from co-founders Eric Nakagawa and Kari Yunebasami, estimates the site receives an average 2 millions pageviews and 8,000 submissions each day. He attributes the site's success partly due to the LOLcat concept's simplicity
–- a quality he maintains is even evident in the site's bare-boned interface.
"You have to share how hard you work," said Huh. "We're not
'Hollywood heroes' or fakers. We're all actually real people."
Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron said that sometimes shaking things up could help bring a site back into the cultural memosphere.
"Some people unplugged when [Rocketboom host] Amanda [Congdon] left," said Baron.
"But we've been able to grow our audience and stay relevant."
Baron recently put his account for the microblogging service Twitter up for sale on eBay. Though he maintains it wasn't a marketing stunt, he says it got people talking about social media in a new way: "People rediscovered us. It worked out well."
Another key point is authenticity.
"The internet is good at finding phonies," said Jay Maynard, better known as Tron Guy for his home-brew costume inspired by the 1982
science-fiction flick Tron. Maynard first wore his spandex unitard in
2004 at a convention, and has made regular appearances in the electroluminescent costume every since. "In most cases, the people who set out to become famous fail," he said. "The ones that succeed are usually by accident."
But the naked honesty required to maintain microcelebrity status has its price. "I don't think I'll ever truly be anonymous again," said
Maynard.
"The internet appreciates honesty," said Huh. "That's how we can explain a phenomena like the Tron Guy. I look at him, and I think 'That'll be me in 10 years.'"
Photos: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
? Correction*: *David Weinberger's book is titled The Cluetrain Manifesto.
See also:
- Behind the Memes: Ji Lee, Bubble Project Media Jammer
- Behind the Memes: IJustine Reveals Offline Talents
- Behind the Memes: Chris Hastings, Creator of Dr. McNinja
- ROFLCon Gears Up for Weekend of Nerddom
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