The Web Celeb 25

Face of fame is changing. The ranks of the world's celebrities used to be dominated by millionaire actors, athletes and musicians, but the Internet has leveled the playing field. A kid with a video camera has access to as large an audience as the biggest Hollywood star. A mom with a blog can attract more readers than a best-selling author. And an opinionated entrepreneur can become a guru to millions.

In Pictures: The Web Celeb 25

The Forbes.com Web Celeb 25 is a list of the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the Internet. From bloggers to podcasters to YouTube stars, these are the people who are creating the digital world from the bottom up.

The face of fame is changing. The ranks of the world's celebrities used to be dominated by millionaire actors, athletes and musicians, but the Internet has leveled the playing field. A kid with a video camera has access to as large an audience as the biggest Hollywood star. A mom with a blog can attract more readers than a best-selling author. And an opinionated entrepreneur can become a guru to millions.

The Forbes.com Web Celeb 25 is a list of the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the Internet. From bloggers to podcasters to YouTube stars, these are the people who are creating the digital world from the bottom up.

In Pictures: The Web Celeb 25

To generate the ranking, we first defined "Web Celeb" as a person famous primarily for creating or appearing in Internet-based content, and for being highly recognizable to a Web-based audience. That definition excludes people who were significantly famous before they hit the Web--like author Arianna Huffington, billionaire Mark Cuban or journalist Michelle Malkin--and leaves us with a pool of people whose fame depends on the Internet.

Next, we created a candidate list of 110 Web celebrities. Each candidate was ranked in five areas: Web references as calculated by Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), traffic ranking of their home page as calculated by Alexa, Technorati rank of their primary Web site or blog, and TV/radio mentions and press clips compiled from Factiva. We gave candidates bonus points if they regularly publish their own videoblog or podcast. All six categories were then totaled to produce a final score, which was sorted to produce our rankings.

Our No. 1 Web Celeb was first known to her fans as Bree, a 16-year-old home-schooled American teenager. Unusually self-possessed and literate, Bree recorded her private thoughts into a digital video camera and posted them on the Web under the name Lonelygirl15. She attracted millions of fans and quickly became one of YouTube's most-watched stars. In August 2006, the videos were exposed as scripted fakes, and Bree was outed as 19-year-old New Zealand-born actress Jessica Rose.

But the news only served to increase her fame. Rose put a pretty face on a breaking phenomenon: that Internet-based entertainment provides an intensely powerful incubator for new stars.

Lonelygirl15 isn't the only video star to make our list. Brooklyn, N.Y.-based performance artist Hosea Frank--aka ZeFrank--came in at No. 11 for his goofy daily broadcast, the show with ZeFrank.

Amanda Congdon (No. 8) rose to fame as the host and co-producer of Rocketboom, a daily news program. Viewers responded favorably to her quirky humor and good looks, and during her year and a half as anchor, the show became one of the most downloaded programs on the Web. In December, Congdon started hosting a weekly downloadable program for ABCNews.com, and launched her own independent show, Starring Amanda Congdon. (See "Video: Starring Congdon As Herself.")

Web celebrity isn't quite the same thing as movie stardom, according to Congdon. "I am not famous," she says. "I'm Internet famous, I'm not real-world famous. It's a different thing." Mainstream consumers are starting to catch on to Internet culture, she says, but many people still don't know what podcasts or blogs are. Regardless, she still gets recognized by fans--and says the experience is "lovely."

Despite the recent emergence of online video, the ranks of Web celebrity are still dominated by the printed word. Bloggers constitute the majority of our list, including celebrity gossip monger Perez Hilton (No. 2), political pundit Markos Moulitsas (No. 3) and tech guru Michael Arrington (No. 10).

Why are bloggers becoming famous? "With everyday bloggers, there's a level of intimacy that even the most paparazzi-followed celebrities don't achieve," says Kyle Bunch, publisher of Blogebrity.com, a site that tracks and ranks the fame of bloggers. "That seems to have a big effect--giving that faux first-name-basis friendship feeling to the reader/blogger relationship. People like Perez Hilton aren't just covering their subjects, they make themselves part of the story whenever possible. That's gotta count for some sort of star quality."

For now, the quality of fame is still pretty different for Web versus Hollywood stars. "There aren't paparazzi camped out across the street [from bloggers] with telephoto lenses," says Bunch. "As for approachability, it varies: I've definitely seen people too nervous to approach one of their favorite bloggers in person--but it's not like it's happening to them every day as they walk down the street."

Still, you can't argue with the increasing power and influence of star bloggers. "They have a huge impact and following, displacing others," says Tom McPhail, professor of media studies at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. "A good example is at the Scooter Libby trial. Bloggers have gotten press credentials, which means some print people got closed out. Wonkette.com will be there, but maybe the Houston or L.A. papers won't be."

In turn, traditional media outlets are launching more blogs of their own, says McPhail, and will likely hire more big-name bloggers--like Ana Marie Cox, the founder of political gossip blog Wonkette. In June 2006 Cox was named the Washington editor of Time.com; she placed high on our final Web Celeb list, but did not break the top 25.

In the coming years, anyone who wants to be famous for their writing will probably be forced onto the Web, according to McPhail. "If you don't have a blog, you're going to be considered an outcast," he says. "You're considered to be not literate. Having a blog will likely be a prerequisite for first jobs."

It's not all good news for bloggers, however. As video technologies mature, those who confine themselves to the printed word will once again find themselves playing second fiddle to video stars. "Amanda Congdon, ZeFrank and Lonelygirl15 are the most compelling test cases to follow in 2007," says Blogebrity's Kyle Bunch. "It's important to note, until the past two years, video was largely out of the mix in blogging; and just as we don't see many newspaper or magazine columnists reaching movie/TV star levels of fame, I think it's safe to say the same fate awaits most bloggers who only traffic in words. But now that we're seeing more and more video blogging, where the output is a bit more comparable to the TV/movie output, I fully expect some genuine 'stars' in the traditional sense to rise to prominence online."

That may be already happening: Jessica Rose has a movie deal, and Amanda Congdon is working on an HBO series. The next Orson Welles could already be toiling away in a basement somewhere, ready to act, write and direct his or her own way to superstardom.

here are 25 web celebs:

The Web Celeb 25

1. Jessica Lee Rose
2. Perez Hilton
3. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
4. Matt Drudge
5. Seth Godin
6. Jeff Jarvis
7. Glenn Reynolds
8. Amanda Congdon
9. Robert Scoble
10. Michael Arrington
11. Hosea Frank
12. Jimmy Wales
13. Harry Knowles
14. Frank Warren
15. Cory Doctorow
16. Xeni Jardin
17. Leo Laporte
18. Merlin Mann
19. John H. Hinderaker
20. Charles Johnson
21. Kevin Sites
22. Mark Lisanti
23. Jason Calacanis
24. Om Malik
25. Violet Blue

*This article is taken from forbes.com

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