EconCeleb is a conference at the Rosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California, about modern day celebrity. I interviewed Rafat Ali and Staci D. Kramer from PaidContent, a website that covers the media landscape as it transitions to the digital age, and Harvey Levin, the founding editor of TMZ, a website about celebrity news. These bloggers are on the cutting edge of media and where it’s going.

Today’s episode is about Comic-con where people become famous vicariously through their characters. Fans come from around the globe for the biggest convention to hit San Diego, California, each year.

Last week, at the Fort Mason center in San Francisco, while attending the PSFK conference, I met up with Amit Gupta. Gupta is the founder of Photojojo, a newsletter and website for photographers, and also helps to organize Jelly, collaborative meet-up style working events.

James D. Rolfe aka Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) formally known as Angry Nintendo Nerd went from a small town video game reviewing geek to a bonified internet phenomenon.

I covered this topic before on the weekly live show about one month ago but had no idea that it would grow to be one of the biggest memes this summer. As you can see, the video in question features a young woman, Lauren Bernat, and her boyfriend, Giovanni, and has reached millions of views in just one month, gaining national news coverage and landing Lauren on the popular MTV show, TRL. They are trying to figure out how to make money off of this, but so far have not been able to land a major deal. I will be keeping my eye on what’s next for this young couple.

Jonathan Coulton is an excellent example of someone who took his internet fame and turned it into a thriving career. He is a musician with a heavy geek heart who resonates with geek cultures online. Coulton has one of the largest and strongest followings of internet fans - they totally lift him up and push his music forward. See also: music, wikipedia bio.

Listen to this audio podcast interview of JoCo with Tara Hunt.

Rex Sorgatz of fimoculous deserves an encore! Well I decided to make a part two where we talk more about Rex.

Music, Rubber

Rex Sorgatz is a link blogger at fimoculous. He follows internet culture, music, tv, media, tech and recently published an article in New York Magazine on how to become microfamous in 8 steps. I thought it was interesting and decided to interview Rex about his eight steps (self-publish, stylize, overshare, respond, ally, diversify, create controversy, persist).

My Damn Channel is an online video network competing with networks like Revision3, Next New Networks while disrupting even larger networks like MTV. MDC is focused on providing repeatable, professional content with a variety of different ad supported verticals such as comedy and tutorials.

Harry Shearer, the brilliant actor/comedian/writer, produces a channel on the network. I was delighted to interview Rob Barnett at their office in NYC.

My favorite show is You Suck at Photoshop. It’s a fun tutorial series about photoshop tricks that makes me ROFL.

For more information, see NewTeeVee’s cover of their launch almost exactly one year ago.

Music by Christopher Cushman and Kevin Jones.

Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox are known around the world (on YouTube) by millions of fans for their comedy series, Smosh. The two met in Junior High School, found that they shared a similar sense of humor, and eventually began posting lip dubs to YouTube. Fast forward to today:

YouTube:
#1 - Most Subscribed (All Time)
#1 - Most Viewed (All Time) - Comedians
#11 - Most Viewed (All Time)

Now Smosh also has their own website which is gaining a lot of momentum. For almost no expense, and almost no technical experience, Ian and Anthony have fostered an enormous online community around their videos.