Stardom via the Web

Terry Heaton reads The Guardian's David Fickling.

Terry Heaton:

"The point of the article is that the web is producing a new genre of mass media stars, people who cross over into the mainstream by virtue of the sheer volume of visitors or views they generate. The mainstream likes them, because they drag their fans with them (hopefully).

It's really important that traditional media people keep up with all these new "discoveries," because every community has them. This is the real story of the personal media revolution and one that will baffle top-down media types forever."

David Fickling:

"If you're hoping that it's all Arctic Monkeys up there, prepare to be disappointed: the most popular profile on MySpace (barring the ubiquitous founder Tom Anderson, who is on every profile on the site) is a Vietnamese-American glamour model called Tila Tequila whose songs include such masterpieces of the underground as "Playgirl Central".

She has 1.3 million friends - equivalent to the population of Estonia - and her latest MySpace track, Fuck Ya Man, has been downloaded nearly 2.8m times - equivalent to the population of Jamaica. So Tila Tequila, we reluctantly salute you: the most popular internet star we've never heard of."