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Internet Famous

By Adrianne Jeffries 5/14/12 10:13am

Internet Famous

Mr. Wozniak. (Photo: flickr.com/koeln_de)

Steve Wozniak Has a Cold

There is a certain level of unenviable überfame at which every utterance and twitch merits a headline. Steve Jobs sent an email! Mark Zuckerberg wore a hoodie! On this plane of celebrity, every step is a statement.

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak is one such überfamous personality. (We even covered the time he made $781 working from home.) Essentially retired, Mr. Wozniak, or Woz, as he’s lovingly called, is good-natured enough not to mind being used as a proxy for the tight lips at Apple. He also has a low filter between his brain and his mouth. Repeatedly shunned by his former cofounder, Mr. Wozniak continued to speak out—about the white iPhone, about Bing, about whatever—and made multiple appearances on reality TV. We noticed that today, the Woz is featured in no fewer than three stories on Google News, partly due to a speaking tour in Australia. Roundup time! Read More

By Jessica Roy 4/13/12 5:09pm

Internet Famous

Mr. Ludwin (Twitter)

Why Twitter Shut Down the Fame Game

The Twitter game Fame launched just a few weeks ago, but it appears the game’s 15 minutes of fame are already up. In a tweet sent yesterday, the team announced that Twitter planned to shut down the game because it violates its Terms of Service agreement.

As we reported in March, the Fame game gave us all a chance to feel like Lady Gaga for a day. Sign up to play, and you’re immediately entered into a lottery with a new winner daily. When your name is drawn, all Fame players automatically follow you, and you get a chance to prove why they should continue to follow you once your turn is over. But no longer–apparently the game violated the “spirit” of Twitter’s Terms of Service. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 3/27/12 4:17pm

Internet Famous

Mr. Ludwin. (Twitter)

Fame Game Is Like the Holy Grail of Twitter Filled With Instant Social Juice

Adam Ludwin, a two-time entrepreneur and now a principal at RRE Ventures, is a fame monster, in that he’s looking for Lady Gaga-level fame. But he wants to share it with you, too. The affable Mr. Ludwin, along with Big Human developers Rus Yusupov and Dominik Hofmann, created a Twitter-based fame game that we predict will soon have all your followers spamming your timeline for invites.

Fame, the game, is brilliant in its simplicity. The goal is to make everyone as Twitter famous as Lady Gaga, for a day. This is accomplished via a mass follower agreement: sign up to play, and you’re entered into a lottery that selects a new winner every day. On the day you win, everyone else playing will automatically follow you for 24 hours. Right now that’s a 976-follower boost and a chance to convince everyone to keep you. Long Island Radio deejay Astra, today’s winner, saw her follower count go from 5,000 to 5,172. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 10/13/11 12:28pm

Internet Famous

naveen

Foursquare Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai Tries His Hand at Jewelry Modeling

First came the Dens and Naveen’s Gap billboard, then David Karp’s Uniqlo ad, and now the photogenic founders of New York startups are showing in jewelry campaigns.

A new black-and-white series of portraits from DANNIJO, the social media savvy jewelry line, features both Foursquare’s Naveen Selvaduari (well, his hand at least) and LearnVest’s Alexa von Tobel, along with celebrities like Questlove. Read More