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We have 3 axioms which we consider very inspirational, very accurate, and very advantageous for all people involved in our current venture here on Stainedcheeks.

--Nowadays anyone can be famous for fifteen kilobytes.

--Whoever conquers an audience has opened a market.

"Anyone can be famous for 15 kb" is directly inspired by a famous Warhol statement, revisited in cyberpunk flavour. "Everyone has the right to consume entertainment" is a challenge to the predominant billing systems. The latest assertion focuses on the monetization of "virtual stardom" status on the "market of attention", as the Web has been defined. What we mean here is that rules have changed and that by playing in creative forms there will be new winners. We will explain our vision in the next paragraphs.

1) Glocal Prosumers
-Internet Subversion of paradigms
in 'classic' Show-Biz & Jet-Set
mechanisms

The web-era has fundamentally shaken the traditional establishment of jet-set & show-biz, based on a limited elite of companies and stars who publish motion pictures, music albums & photobooks targeting a base of passive consumers. In that system, the fame was disproportionate and exclusive, envied & unreachable. In the Internet Age, the situation changes. On a side, contents about celebrities, stars & protagonists are available immediately, anywhere, anytime, to almost anyone - legally or not, often for free, never with queue. This means that there is a loss of monopoly, profit and control on the way entertainment is distributed - no more produced & sold from above, but hacked & shared from the grassroots. While we will not defend copyright infringment typically present on P2P & Torrents, we do find them a very emblematic example of information technology revolution in Digital Media Consumption & Electronic Entertainment Trends.

The Web-Era revolution doesn't stop to the crisis of the CD/DVD empires, undermined byt the viral distribution of Mp3s & DivX for free. The change doesn't stop to the way fame is sold - it goes beyond, altering the way legends are built & markets conquered. Digital cameras, cheap broadband, opensource encoding & Web2 technology a la MySpace have also changed the way users deal with content-making: they become producers of movies, protagonists of galleries, fans of friends, and so virtual stars who share their beauty & material with other peers - they are "prosumers", as many have skillfully suggested. Thus fame, albeit of smaller and more human scale than the one of Monroe or Hepburn, becomes a daily commodity and a mundane opportunity - no more exclusive & magic of a few, but right & commodity for all.

In a global scenario of upheveal, atomization & subversion, there is need to reorganize new systems, new networks & new structures to channel, satisfy & combine glocal demands & prosumer supplies of advertising & entertainment. We do think that this process, improperly indicated as "democratization of the media", is very desirable as long as it serves to reduce hegemonies, liberate talents, launch alternatives & benefit communities. The marketing, monetization & growth of prosumers in e-celebrities is a business sector in itself, and StChXX is adamant about playing a part in it.

2) Fee-Raiders & Micro-Payments -
the Asymmetric development of
International Secure Purchase Gateways

We do notice however that another, again desirable, but not necessarily identic process, is taking place - the passage from "free riding" to "micropayment" in the enjoyment of web-services. This means that (after a long period of false hopes & sick myths about the possibility of a Internet Economy based exclusively on ads) Paypal, eBay, 2Checkout, ePassporte, Epoch, MoneyBookers, WesternUnion etc have managed to provide financial systems worth of trust, contributing to the diffusion on Web of the idea that paying cash for a valid product can be safe and isn't evil.

Now the prosumers described above have accepted the need to pay what they consume picking the right price; they have also grasped that they can enjoy many benefits by selling their own contents, be it even in the form of "donation accepted" or "buy me a beer". The Payment Gateway Revolution in the Age of Cell-Phones & Social Networks isn't anyway yet entirely accomplished; at least it is not accomplished if the ideal goal is the possibility to complete online, at once, any micro-purchase from any micro-provider, no matter where buyers and sellers are located.

We will not dispute the evident business wisdom of refusing accredited seller status or premium credit card billing accounts in "failed" or "rogue" states like Congo, Somalia, Cuba, Nepal, Georgia or N.Korea. However, we and many other observers have noticed a different, much more arguable trend: the availability of credit cards & Paypal, typical web-shopping standard in Western Countries, is hard to achieve in relatively stable nations, indeed quite developed in more than an area, and surely hosting a sizeable e-audience able/willing to afford a not irrelevant luxury consumption (eg: Ukraine, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Colombia).

The gap between "exotic" demand for famous goods (eg, a Megaupload premium account wanted in Bangladesh) & the absence of suitable payment infrastructures where the potential buyer is located translates itself in a annoying hindrance for the native people and in an interesting phenomenon for the enterpreneur - a context harbinger of deals & opportunities. There are in fact many business and many brands in rich countries which do sell great products online, and have reached with their fame any part of the world. Notice that we do not mean just luxury clothing or status products. We include in this list of brands some large "premium member" based online communities, where the "virtual stardom" described above is crafted & built via social networking (eg, DeviantArt, which sells premium subscriptions).

These brands, that represent the charming cream of the rich part of the world, appeal anywhere, also and overall in the less affluent zones of the developing countries. WE do know that even there (Serbia, Ghana, Vietnam, Lybia, Russia, Philippines, Romania, etc), many prosumers would love to access large premium networks enjoying paid benefits (eg, a Playboy membership), and more often than not they can absolutely afford it in raw money terms &, at most, challenging the occasionally restrictive law systems. Notably, these very desirable virtual products cannot be purchased if not via Visa or Mastercard, which are missing or unavailable in a very large part of the world. In these very same parts of the world, instead, needed cash, phone system and obviously Internet arrive already. In other words, the market is potentially universal, but the gateways to pay aren't yet authentically glocal (at least not yet enough).

3) The Alibaba eBayers -
the emergence of low-cost
Manifacturers & Import-Export
freelancers from Eurasia
& IndoChina in the Web2 Era.

As a recent Alibaba advert seen on Bebo & mySpace (May 2009) has suggested us, we've also to add to our Glocal Internet Scenario the great economic weight of large manifacturers of China and India: these firms are often very specialized, competitive and productive in their own industry sector, that often manage to dominate in terms of pricing, quantity & overall quality. They however suffer of a relevant shortcoming - they do not know how to properly market themselves in different cultures & in a high-tech context. Unlike Western European North-American or Japanese top-level multinationals of consumer goods, the Eurasian & IndoChinese manifacturers are overall vulnerable in the sectors of branding & identity. Manifactures & makers of any kind from Indo-China or Eurasia, as some say, are operating in massive, different, developing countries, somewhat isolated due to their own continental greatness, without a qualified, experienced contact with their final consumer, his/her legends, his/her jargon and his/her vision.

The large, specialized factories of China and India often, not incorrectly, see Internet as a promising form of marketing & communication to jump ahead of limited hardwired infrastructures & cumbersome hierarchies of dealers & resellers, bridging the visibility gap with the metropolitan prosumers of richer nations. These large manifacturers have surely economic means & remarkable enthusiasm, when they show up on global business platforms like Alibaba or eBay; however they surely lack the experience, expertise, specialization & savoir-faire to really exploit the business potential of the Web2 Social Networks, as the unacceptable attempts to use spam to dump replica products reminds us daily. MArketing these manifacturers online is the role of a specialized entity, a new kind of advertising agency that is able to match (1) products in need of new clients & alterntive markets together with (2) prosumers looking for prestige & benefits.

By spotting these trends and these needs, we at StainedCheeks.biz want to provide 3 essential general services for the collective interest of all parties involved: (1)we can provide technical, financial & inspirational support via various forms of viral marketing for genial prosumers & charming web-stars who deserve a chance and need help to reach their Internet Celebrity on the Virtual Arena of best Web2 Platforms; (2) we want to connect, via new/ custom payment means, multinational brands that supply premium content & micro-consumers of developing countries seeking luxury entertaintment, that can afford already but cannot yet buy for real, overall due to anachronistic gateway barriers. This will often happen with the productive involvement of (3) competitive, underrated "exotic" manifacturers that will be sponsors and protagonists of contests & campaigns where popularity monetization becomes visibility engine for brand-awareness.