What’s your STARCOUNT score?
Who’s the most popular comedian in Taiwan?
Is it Chen Han Dian, i hear you answer?
Nope.
Ok, then it must be Patrick Li?
Sorry, wrong again. It’s Jackie Wu. He has a STARCOUNT of 511.
Can i have another go? Something a bit easier?
OK. Closer to home. What’s the most popular brand in Italy?
Easy, Ferarri.
Nope. It’s Nutella. STARCOUNT of 7087. Ferrari is number two with a STARCOUNT of 5852. And close behind it in third is, wait for it…Ferrero Rocher, (5718).
What is STARCOUNT?
Well, firstly anyone out there remember Celebdaq? For a brief moment, Celebdaq suddenly made sense of why the internet existed. It also accounted for ALL office internet usage at lunchtimes before Facebook. If you weren’t sending an email on Lotus Notes, you were busy flogging Jodie Marsh, so to speak.
Celebdaq was a virtual celebrity stock market where you could buy and sell celebs, based on their fluctuating public value. And then win cash prizes. It’s hard to believe – in the ice-cold age of austerity, beneath the chastening shadow of Leveson – that Celebdaq was the work of the BBC. But then, this was a time when Celebrity was a fresh, experimental genre. Heat exploded and ruled – the FT of celebrity trading to Celebdaq’s FTSE.
The truth is Celebdaq was an idea of rare genius. It prefigured “social buzz”, before there were means to measure it. And now STARCOUNT feels like it could be Celebdaq brought kicking and screaming into the social age. Essentially a weighted aggregator of various social feeds & measures, STARCOUNT is a measurement tool with global celebrity aspirations. A G20 summit of fame economics that takes in not just celebs but brands, political figures, religion, etc.
And, like all great things, it takes highly subjective subtleties of human value and is wilfully reductive with them. Give me a number, i want a number!
It’s potential application in feeding new entertainment formats is significant, from award shows to video charts. And for celebrities it’s one more shallow measure of success. Which, if you’re an agent, is always a good thing.
Ok, one more to finish. Who’s the most popular politician in Pakistan?
