The Era of the Nanocelebrity

Theresa Senft and Clive Thompson first put out the idea of the microcelebrity a few years ago, an individual who is promote him or herself on the media and channels that are available to her or him and broadcasts that presentation to the general public and generally has an audience in the thousands. A microcelebrity is different from the traditional celebrity as the traditional celebrity is typically “widely known” to the general public. The key instrument of the microcelebrity is the blog. People have risen through the static and noise to become the leaders within this field. There are lists of the top microcelebrities and web celebrities (which is a mixed list of microcelebrities and traditional celebrities would use the Internet to express themselves for their fans).

However, it seems that lately that I’m not looking at blogs and other “long forms” of Internet media, rather I use services like online social networks and microblogging to express myself and gain information regarding my world. I have a series of friends that I follow and I chose to listen to in my field. More importantly, there are a few experts that can express their ideas even with the limitations of the medium (140 characters or some other mediated limitation).

I would make an argument that we may be moving beyond the microcelebrity and heading towards something of an era of the nanocelebrity, which would have a smaller audience than the microcelebrity (600 to 1,000 people) and would tailor their message and knowledge to their niche audience. 600 people is four times Dunbar’s number, which is the amount of people you could actively be aware of their existence. I’m looking further down the “Long Tail” to see that the nanocelebrity could survive in this mediated economy. The purpose of this blog and website is to explore the concept of the nanocelebrity and see what happens next.