The changing face of celebdom
Two interesting things happened in the last few days......on one side, courtesy IIPM, IBM, JAM and ArinDAM, blogsphere had its new celebrity. Gaurav Sabnis was on every second blog that I visited, on forwarded emails and Yahoo Chats.....everywhere! More on Gaurav's choice in another post.....but all Gaurav did was an act in line with his principles - something that none of the mainstream media covered (until recently). And yet, the info spread like a wildfire on the blogsphere. From internal bullentin boards and posts, I am sure the discussion would have percolated to a lot of other places....
The other was my friend Dhaval Bathia making it to the front page of Education Times. Dhaval is a young prodigy - having trained 30,000 people in Vedic Maths and authored 2 books, he's 22. Dhaval inspired my first book, The Portrait of a Super Student. I was quite excited to see him appear there - and obviously assuming that others in my family would have seen it, I brought up the topic. To my utter surprise, my entire family had missed it.
Come to think of it they really had no reason to catch it - 100 pages of Times hit our home day after day. Education times comes twice a week. And there is so much of an information overload that there is really little that you can be sure will be read.
Which makes me think about how this whole thing is changing. Imagine a huge rally with just one stage - a leader with a powerful loudspeaker. You have no choice but to listen to that leader. However boring he may be. After all, he has the mic. This is pretty much like your DD era - just one channel - one group of people with the power to broadcast, and for the rest of us to bear the agony. I belive that Indian television reached its all time high viewership at the time of Mahabharat - why even the streets used to be deserted!
Slowly, other people in the rally start putting up stages of their own, and begin to get their loud speakers. Now as a listener you have a choice of whom to listen to. People naturally flock to the most interesting speaker. The power to speak - to broadcast is slowly getting democratized. And what is being talked is getting interesting. Noise levels too are rising. That's similar to your cable TV zamana. Channels are popping up and the most interesting ones are winning - viewership is diffused.
Eventually where this is heading though is interesting. Imagine now, in the rally, that anybody and everybody who wants to speak has a loudspeaker. The rally turns into a mini fish market. Everyone always has an intrinsic urge to say something - and now with a loudspeaker in each persons hand, its getting crazier by the day! Blogging is perhaps the start of a stage similar to this - a stage in when we would be able to literally broadcast our own stuff to the world. Not only with text but everything - audio, video and the works. It'll be a crazy world where everyone is talking, and listening only to those who are very interesting.
Imagine what would this do to the media as a whole. Advertising that depends on eyeballs and attention would obviously shift. From niche channels to super niche - forget about having just a family comedy channel. I could be broadcasting videos or programmes about my trekking experiences - for the trekking community. Or a nostalgic video for IIM Class of 2005. Downloadable on demand.
The first group of those who reach and hijack this sphere are going to become immensely powerful. Or atleast central to this revolution. Someday, I believe, Rashmi's blog will be read more than JAM. It wont cost her anything to publish. And possibly it will have advertising revenues too. Companies like Google see this already, and are in the process of ENABLING it - trying to help people broadcast, and grow in the process. 80,000 new blogs a day. The pace is simply scorching! And its happening as you read this - in the time you'd have read this, another 150 odd blogs would have started!
What does that mean for celebdom? I believe that becoming a celeb is going to become both easier and more difficult at the same time. For someone like Gaurav who took a once-in-a-lifetime decision, he was an instant celeb. In the blogsphere, he would have instant recognition for what he did. And he didn't spend a dime on PR or publicity.
And yet on the other hand the next time Dhaval appears in Education Times, I fear even fewer people are going to notice it. Simply because the rate at which information is going to be thrown at people is bound to increase. And attention spans are bound to fall. Which would possibly also mean that celebdom would be very very polarised. You would have a handful of really famous celebs - essentially in fields that have a cross appeal like films, politics or sports. And loads of field celebs known to junta connected to that field.
Of course all this might take years and years to happen - Gaurav is pretty much one of the first net celebs we have. And this network is still far far smaller given the sheer size of India. And we're talking about an India where people havent opened their first email accounts yet, forget blogging. They're still waiting for uninterrupted power, pure water and food. Till then we still have hope for the wannabe Page 3 celebs and Medianet type PR agencies!
The other was my friend Dhaval Bathia making it to the front page of Education Times. Dhaval is a young prodigy - having trained 30,000 people in Vedic Maths and authored 2 books, he's 22. Dhaval inspired my first book, The Portrait of a Super Student. I was quite excited to see him appear there - and obviously assuming that others in my family would have seen it, I brought up the topic. To my utter surprise, my entire family had missed it.
Come to think of it they really had no reason to catch it - 100 pages of Times hit our home day after day. Education times comes twice a week. And there is so much of an information overload that there is really little that you can be sure will be read.
Which makes me think about how this whole thing is changing. Imagine a huge rally with just one stage - a leader with a powerful loudspeaker. You have no choice but to listen to that leader. However boring he may be. After all, he has the mic. This is pretty much like your DD era - just one channel - one group of people with the power to broadcast, and for the rest of us to bear the agony. I belive that Indian television reached its all time high viewership at the time of Mahabharat - why even the streets used to be deserted!
Slowly, other people in the rally start putting up stages of their own, and begin to get their loud speakers. Now as a listener you have a choice of whom to listen to. People naturally flock to the most interesting speaker. The power to speak - to broadcast is slowly getting democratized. And what is being talked is getting interesting. Noise levels too are rising. That's similar to your cable TV zamana. Channels are popping up and the most interesting ones are winning - viewership is diffused.
Eventually where this is heading though is interesting. Imagine now, in the rally, that anybody and everybody who wants to speak has a loudspeaker. The rally turns into a mini fish market. Everyone always has an intrinsic urge to say something - and now with a loudspeaker in each persons hand, its getting crazier by the day! Blogging is perhaps the start of a stage similar to this - a stage in when we would be able to literally broadcast our own stuff to the world. Not only with text but everything - audio, video and the works. It'll be a crazy world where everyone is talking, and listening only to those who are very interesting.
Imagine what would this do to the media as a whole. Advertising that depends on eyeballs and attention would obviously shift. From niche channels to super niche - forget about having just a family comedy channel. I could be broadcasting videos or programmes about my trekking experiences - for the trekking community. Or a nostalgic video for IIM Class of 2005. Downloadable on demand.
The first group of those who reach and hijack this sphere are going to become immensely powerful. Or atleast central to this revolution. Someday, I believe, Rashmi's blog will be read more than JAM. It wont cost her anything to publish. And possibly it will have advertising revenues too. Companies like Google see this already, and are in the process of ENABLING it - trying to help people broadcast, and grow in the process. 80,000 new blogs a day. The pace is simply scorching! And its happening as you read this - in the time you'd have read this, another 150 odd blogs would have started!
What does that mean for celebdom? I believe that becoming a celeb is going to become both easier and more difficult at the same time. For someone like Gaurav who took a once-in-a-lifetime decision, he was an instant celeb. In the blogsphere, he would have instant recognition for what he did. And he didn't spend a dime on PR or publicity.
And yet on the other hand the next time Dhaval appears in Education Times, I fear even fewer people are going to notice it. Simply because the rate at which information is going to be thrown at people is bound to increase. And attention spans are bound to fall. Which would possibly also mean that celebdom would be very very polarised. You would have a handful of really famous celebs - essentially in fields that have a cross appeal like films, politics or sports. And loads of field celebs known to junta connected to that field.
Of course all this might take years and years to happen - Gaurav is pretty much one of the first net celebs we have. And this network is still far far smaller given the sheer size of India. And we're talking about an India where people havent opened their first email accounts yet, forget blogging. They're still waiting for uninterrupted power, pure water and food. Till then we still have hope for the wannabe Page 3 celebs and Medianet type PR agencies!
posted by The One at 10:16 PM
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