The Rise of the Me Brand
In this next few weeks Facebook are going to introduce Timeline for all their users. If you've already changed your Facebook profile, you'll have had the opportunity to skim back over the past few your life, deleting embarrassing photos that you don't want to show on your Timeline. You'll have been asked to choose a cover image to represent yourself. These days Facebook has moved on from just being a way to catch up with your friends and has become more about creating an online image for yourself.
When David Beckham was declared to be a brand in the late 1990s, most of us thought that was something that celebrities did. We didn't look into the future and think how we'd be manipulating our public image on a social networking site 15 years later. Over the last few years however, a generation of digital savvy upstarts realised that the web offered them the tools to create and promote their own 'me' brand.
Jesse Draper, host of web show The Valley Girl Show, and Daisy Whitney, who produces the video blog New Media Minute, are a couple of young female journalists who did just this. By keeping their focus within the industry, they gleaned tips from their guests and become internet stars in their own right.
But it's not all about keeping it digital – young entrepreneurs have been successful in other fields too. Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal call themselves internetainers, rather than comedians. When Their Facebook song went viral, they got a mainstream TV deal for their online web series I Love Local Commericals. They now travel around the States making local ads with local people for their cable show Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings.
YouTube has been the key to many of these success stories: 15-year-old Megan Parken dropped out of school due to the success of her YouTube channel meganheartsmakeup which attracted sponsorship from big name brands.
In fact a whole industry has sprung up around YouTube. Entrepreneurs like Tay Zonday who had viral success with music video Chocolate Rain are making a fortune out of ads which are placed on their branded YouTube channels. These internet stars post shows regularly and often work together, guesting on each other's channels. Maker Studios in Culver City has opened in response to YouTube's success and is expanding rapidly. Maker takes a cut of partners' ad revenue and in exchange provides them with studio space, freelance staff and technical support.
Maker is an example of how these digital stars aren't just making a brand of themselves but are actually becoming media owners. Jesse Draper, for instance, runs her own media production company and her show is distributed on the web by partners including AOL.
It's not just an American phenomena, in the UK we have homegrown stars too. Poppy Dinsey started a blog called What I Wore Today which has grown into a an online fashion magazine called wiwt.com. She has the support of major fashion brands like H&M and TopShop, and was named in The Evening Standard's 1000 most influential people in digital.
Meanwhile Hermione Way (pictured) used her student loan to buy a camera for newspepper.com and runs an online video news site called techfluff.tv which gives student news hounds and editors the opportunity to work at high profile events and get paid.
Interestingly many of these new stars are women. The old boys' network has no place in this rapidly expanding new field. Anyone can become successful if they have a good idea and execute it well. These digital entrepreneurs work damn hard to create the me brand by regularly posting great content and maximise it by owning their own media channel. Something definitely worth thinking about when you're tackling the Facebook Timeline.