When will I, will I be famous – I can’t answer, I can’t answer that. Well actually now you can – you just need to add up all the unique subscribers over all your social media outlets.
Ok so the headline is a bit misleading – I’m neither big or around here much to be honest – In reality the only place I’m pretty big is the waste.
However I was pondering on the fickle wonder of internet fame the other day – mainly after the most recent Twit (the first I experienced live) and the “my subscriber list is bigger than yours” machinations between the guests.
On average about 45 people subscribe to my blogs feed but I imagine more people than that actually read the blog – I can’t count them so I’ll take 45.
Bare with me – this is going somewhere.
On top of that there are about 40 people that call me a contact on Flickr and 31 friends on Pownce. I also have 122 followers on Twitter, 47 friends on MyBlogLog, 260 friends on MySpace and 70 friends on Facebook.
On top of that there are about a dozen other social networks I’ve long since forgotten that also has friends – but these are the big ones.
Image via Wikipedia
You could argue then that this gives me (and yes I know there are duplicates but I’m ignoring them) a social media rating of 570.
This, in the grand scheme of things is a tiny tiny number especially in comparison to someone like Robert Schobel who has 21,384 subscribers on Twitter alone.
But numbers aren’t the be-all and end-all of web fame. There’s also a recognition factor and personal branding to take into account.
For the last five years I’ve used upyourego as my online identity in almost everything I do and I like to think that, at least in some circles, the term is recognised – I’ve certainly been getting a lot more links and references on message boards and blogs recently.
And then there’s Google – if you type upyourego into Google something like the first 10 pages of results are ALL MINE – either pointing to the variety of dead social media profiles I’ve signed up for and message boards I occasionaly frequent (if your interested the only boards I regularly visit are FinalGear, TVForum and DoctorWhoForum).
It also included my Jaiku posts, Tweets, Pownce comments and responses I’ve made on other people’s blogs.
But all this proves is that I’m pretty prolific on the internet – not that I’m famous on the internet. It might be different if I’d used my own name for the past five years – after all typing in ryanmorrison.co.uk will still bring you here.
But a search for Ryan Morrison or “Ryan Morrison” in Google returns a very different result to upyourego. In that search I’m only the top two results and not the first ten pages.
What you will get from a ‘Ryan Morrison’ search is more of my comments – as I tend to leave my real name on comments – and more of my work stuff as that’s all by-lined.
But I’m not famous, I’m not even internet famous – although with the rise in internet use the lines are becoming more blurred by the day.
People like Kevin Rose, John C Dvorak, Adam Curry, Leo Laporte and Veronica Belmont are famous, what they say matters to a LOT of people and can command a LOT of respect and influence on business leaders, politicians and their ilk.
And that’s the point I’m getting to really – what internet fame – on the multi-thousand subscriber levels enjoyed by the likes of Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble, Kevin Rose and Jason Calacanis brings is influence – every post Leo sends out is seen by 23 thousand people.
In contrast every post I send out is seen by about 120 people. That’s not bad and my RSS subscriber numbers tend to go up after a tweet linking to a blog post – but it isn’t famous.
Which brings me on to the next point.
At the moment I subscribe to everyone that subscribes to me – try it (twitter.com/upyourego) on every platform I regularly use – if you comment here I’ll read your blog and probably add it to my RSS reader if I like it.
However – if my numbers ever increase, if more people suddenly start subscribing to my blog, commenting regularly, following me on twitter, adding me as a friend on Pownce and becoming friends on Flickr – could I handle it?
It’s already pretty tough following 170 people on Twitter – it’s great fun as the conversation never dies BUT many more and it will be like trying to follow a seriously busy chat room without any real structure.
But that’s probably never going to happen. So with all this talk of fame, the only thing that’s left to say is:
Photo credit for this post goes to by jakuza for the brilliant Creative Commons licenced ‘fame‘ image.
Ryan Morrison is a geek, journalist and someone obsess with media, technology and geek culture. He writes for the BBC in Jersey on any subject that falls on his desk and presents a show about the islands music scene. He has been blogging for six years.