Famous

Big Data

Disillusioned by her failure for people to care, she just stopped trying to be the center of attention. Instead she began to spend all her days glued to her phone following every move that One Direction, the Janoskians and her new favorite band Emblem3 made.  She couldn't get enough. Every time they breathed she knew about them. Her parents were a bit worried as she couldn’t go to the washroom or eat a meal without her phone in one hand. Krista appeared to be fascinated by their every move. She kept score every time they tweeted and every time a new fan was made.

But actually she was studying something else.

While she retreated from being the centre of attention she had more time on her hands and signed up for this course called “How to become a movie star” on Udemy. Accidentally she clicked on a course called “Big Data: How to Use Data to Market your company”. She thought at first this was way too boring but actually became mesmerized in the first 15 minutes as the instructor Angus, a 44 year old man who had a sexy Scottish accent condescendingly explained that the world is not as you think it may be.

He showed the path to how The Harlem Shake was actually no accident. It was a carefully calculated data driven move that went viral on Youtube. "WOW" thought Krista. "This is crazy stuff".While Angus was a butcher by trade, but became fascinated by data as his younger brother worked at Netflix and invented their recommendation algorithm. He had a chip on his shoulder that he was not his brother so he often swore and used the words "bloody hell" and "shite" as he explained how crazy internet fame was and how he had developed a formula to engineer virality.  

Krista had never seen anything like this. Something clicked.

Krista stayed up all day and all night for the next 3 weeks learning about how to think about using content and social behavior to get the most amount of attention as a celebrity.

She was blown away and started measuring the Jonaskians and One Direction content and social moves. She started seeing patterns that seemed too exact for humans to be architecting and wondered how these celebrities were able to all grow their fanbases at exponential rates in such a similar fashion.

 She was fascinated.

And had a brilliant idea.