Erin Horgan is more than a casual John Mayer fan. When she learned about a Caribbean cruise being offered earlier this month with the singer as the featured entertainment, the 22-year-old worker at a Hyannis, Mass., scrapbooking store didn’t hesitate to drop $1,000 for a ticket.
As it turned out, she got even more contact with her favorite singer than she expected: Mr. Mayer, hamming it up for fellow passengers, donned a neon green thong-style swimsuit as Ms. Horgan and others furiously snapped photographs. In a blog post after returning home, Ms. Horgan joked that she was going to send the pictures to celebrity magazine Us Weekly.
She didn’t have to. Within days, Ms. Horgan heard not only from Us Weekly, but also from MTV, VH1, Rolling Stone, Blender and Newsweek. She ended up selling photos to Newsweek and VH1 – she says she was offered “a couple hundred” for each photo, but declines to be more specific.
“The thought of getting shots that anyone was interested in was never on my mind,” she said.
Ms. Horgan is part of the changing face of the paparazzi trade, an Internet-fueled industry that feeds on the public’s seemingly insatiable interest in entertainment news. Photo agencies are increasingly relying on submissions from regular folk who either happen to bump into celebrities while carrying digital cameras, or who have injected themselves into the cat-and-mouse game of celebrity snapshots, despite any formal training.
This has led to an explosion in the number of photographs available to magazines and Web sites like TMZ or Perez Hilton. And it has created friction with the old-guard paparazzi, who often find themselves navigating throngs of amateurs at red-carpet events. The pros complain that the newcomers are partly to blame for depressed prices, since they sometimes agree to sell shots for $25 or $50 that could have commanded several hundred dollars before. What’s more, they gripe about rude and particularly aggressive behavior from some of the amateurs – no small allegation in an industry long known for its anything-goes tactics.
“It’s the citizen paparazzi,” said Mario Lavandeira, who is better known by his online persona Perez Hilton. His popular gossip blog frequently posts celebrity pictures submitted by readers.
The Rise of the ‘Citizen Paparazzi’
Hannah Reichert, an 11-year-old in North Bergen, N.J., likes dressing up dolls, but the worlds of Barbie and Bratz aren’t so interesting to her. Instead, she visits Cartoon Doll Emporium, a Web site she discovered while searching for dolls.
“It’s just cool,” she said of the site, where she can drag and drop shirts, dresses, shoes and jewelry onto drawings of celebrities and cartoon characters, as well as chat with friends in online forums. She doesn’t play with actual dolls, but CDE, as she and other users call it, is a regular stop between dinner and bedtime. “I go on there every day,” she said.
CDE is one of a handful of virtual doll sites, including Stardoll and The Doll Palace, that have seen traffic surge. The straightforward sites, which evoke traditional paper dolls, have managed to capture an often ignored segment of the online audience: young girls. And investors are taking note: Stardoll, launched by a Finnish doll enthusiast and her son, has received more than $10 million in venture funding from Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. Meanwhile, the makers of Barbie and Bratz dolls are moving to add new online dress-up offerings.
(Also appeared on AOL News)
]]>In the real world, fashionistas are recovering from the spring collections in New York and London and gearing up for shows in Milan and Paris.
But in the fast-growing virtual world of Second Life, many players are too enmeshed in the game’s online fashion community to dissect what Vera Wang or Baby Phat sent down the catwalk in New York. Some players are buying up high fashion for their online graphic incarnations, known as avatars. Others, armed with Adobe Photoshop instead of a needle and thread, are creating their own clothing lines, pitching their designs to style editors, selling their creations, and — in some cases — even earning a living.
Second Life is a simulated world with more than 700,000 “residents,” or players, who sometimes refer to their offline existence as their “first life.” As in earlier computer simulation games like the Sims series, the point isn’t to fulfill a quest, and there are no dragons or wizards to slay. Instead, San Francisco-based Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, has provided a platform for players — median age 32 and 57% male, with 40% living outside the U.S. — to do whatever they want, whether it is building a business, tending bar or launching a space shuttle. Residents chat, shop, build homes, travel and hold down jobs, and they are encouraged to create items in Second Life that they can sell to others or use themselves.
When players buy items or services, real money is involved. That’s because Second Life’s in-game currency, Linden dollars, is based on real U.S. money ($1 U.S. buys about 280 Linden dollars). It’s possible for users to play Second Life free of charge, but closely held Linden takes a cut of many in-world transactions (such as uploading a design to the game), and it charges players for “premium” accounts, which offer more flexibility in owning land and displaying merchandise.
Many virtual items are bought and sold in Second Life, but clothing has emerged as one of the hottest categories. Real clothing makers, including American Apparel Inc. and Adidas, sell items in Second Life that mimic apparel they sell in the real world. Thus, players can dress their avatars in some of the same clothes they wear themselves.
A look at some clothing designed by Second Life players.
(Also appeared in the Northwest Florida Daily News and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
]]>In “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005,” Woods wears the Nike swoosh logo on his polo shirt, baseball cap and even golf club. In “NBA Live 2004,” players can choose the Nike shoes their basketball player wears, from Air Foamposite Pro Colorway 3s to LeBron James’ choice, Air Zoom Generations. And in “NFL Street 2,” receivers are wearing Reebok’s NFL line of apparel.
Sportswear product placement in video games is increasing fast, and with good reason. According to a 2004 report by the Entertainment Software Association, video and computer game sales in the U.S. reached $7 billion in 2003 and continue to grow. That makes gaming almost as big as the U.S. movie industry. (Domestic box-office returns have hovered around $9.5 billion for the past three years, according to the Motion Picture Association.) The average gamer is 29 and expects to be playing as much or more 10 years from now. And girls and young women now account for about 39 percent of game players, a figure that is steadily growing.
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