Business Idea: 15 Minutes of Fame

Here’s a great business idea for you: Create a tool on the web which people can use to create fake fame to tease a friend.

Here’s how it works:

A prankster visits the site, chooses some options, and pays some money.

Then they upload a video and still images of their friend (or themselves).

Then they provide some information on a form.

The system creates fake newspaper articles, blog postings, etc, featuring the still images and/or the video and these things appear on fake websites.

Each site has embed and share options, just like real sites do.  The prankster and his or her friends use these options to spread the word of this person’s new fame.

Options should include:

(1) The initial “Views” counter and the rate at which the counter goes up, in views per hour.  You have to pay extra if you want to simulate a truly viral video.

(2) The number of fake sites on which you want articles and postings to appear.

(3) Whether or not you want fake tweets to be Twittered by our fantastic horde of Twitter bots.

(4) Whether or not you want a fake television news story clip to be created.  Guy sitting at a desk, reading a story about the person, while the video clip plays over his shoulder.

The stories and postings can be scheduled and staggered.  You might charge more for a long running campaign… like stories with updates.

Why would this work?  People paid for rocks.  People paid to have dog feces mailed to foes.  People buy lice.  People pay $5 for a cup of coffee.

I could see it used to create stories for birthdays and anniversaries.

The automated portions of the site should start with postings for $10.  You charge $50 for a television news clip.

The Twitter thing would be pretty funny, because the person paying for the service could provide the dude’s Twitter username… He’d start seeing periodic mentions and RTs of comments about and links to his story.  “Hey, I can’t believe this @JohnDoe guy pulled it off!!”  “RT @JoeWinett: You’ve got to see this @JoeDoe guy.”

And then, the pièce de résistance, when they guy finds his way back to your site from whence all this came, he can pay a DISCOUNTED rate to get his friend back.

I think it’s funny.  It’s easy.  It’s fun.  I wish I had $2400 to pull it off.  You do it.


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