Moguls of New Media According to WSJ

If you want a quick crash course on the abscure talent that have become famous from online video, blogs, podcasts and the like… check out this nice WSJ article by John Jurgensen. It’s titled “Moguls of New Media.”

Highlights from the piece

Christine Dolce, whose MySpace page boasts nearly one million friends — making her arguably one of the most connected people on the Internet. A 24-year-old worked at a makeup counter in a mall, and now has a manager and a start-up jeans company and has won promotional deals for two mainstream consumer brands.

NEW-MEDIA POWER LIST

• The Wall Street Journal’s John Jurgensen discusses new media’s digital entertainers.

• See who’s who among new-media celebrities.

Each week, about a half-million people download a comedic video podcast featuring a former paralegal. A video by a 30-year-old comedian from Cleveland has now been watched by almost 30 million people, roughly the audience for an average “American Idol” episode. The most popular contributor to the photo site Flickr.com just got a contract to shoot a Toyota ad campaign.

Here are some of my favorites from Jugensen’s list of the “new-media power list” (the term “new media” died about 6 months before Web 2.0, didn’t it?)

1. Tiki Bar TV (Jeff Macpherson)- the first video podcast I ever saw.
2. Amanda Unboomed (Amanda Congdon)- you love her or hate her. I do both.
3. Ask A Ninja (Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine)- resulted in the most tribute/ripoffs of anything else that crossed Gore’s world wide web.
4. Evolution of Dance (Judson Laipply)- Will go down as history’s most popular video guy that never made a direct penny from his 30 million views. Let’s hope is new agent dances as well as Laipply.
5. EepyBird (Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz)- First popular video (Diet Coke/Mentos) that actually made someone some money. Check out SaveMentosNow.com for the next evolution of this concept.
6. Channel101.com (Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon)- I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of this one until the “new media” folks at WSJ pointed it out.
7. Brookers (Brooke Brodack)- Seriously, Carson Daly is going to return your calls when your 15 minutes are up.

The YouTube Viral Broker, who helped many of these web celebrities capitalize on their fame, is somewhat offended that the Journal overlooked him. If you want to write Jurgensen and tell him he forgot about nalts, feel free: john.jurgensen@wsj.com.