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In the last decade, both my co-founder, Evan Williams, and I sawpeople moving from email intoblogging, and then blogging intosocial networking, and then socialnetworking into information net-working—what we see Twitter as.

For us, blogging was this greatthing. It meant information wasgoing to be democratized, anyonecould contribute and anyone

could read. The truth was, not everyone was as excited as we were.They were saying, “Well, who is this supposed to be for?”

When social networking came along, it was a little more concrete,but those things were kind of limiting. If it's only going to your friends,the information’s not really going to as many people as it could.

Hopefully, heading into the next decade we’ll see more of the kind ofdefining moments we saw from Twitter, where information from areaslike Iran break out and allow us to see things we wouldn’t be exposed to.

—Mr. Stone is a co-founder of microblogging service Twitter.

‘American Idol’ judge Paula Abdul, at top, at a party for finalists of the TVshow in March. ‘Julie & Julia’ writer Julie Powell, above, at a July screening.

Biz Stone,Twitter founder

By Katherine Rosman

The Do-It-Yourself move-ment took on great popularitythese past 10 years: Putting updrywall. Refinishing kitchencabinets. Getting famous.

Once, there were but a fewways to land in the limelight,and they mostly entailed yourinvolvement in professionalsports, politics or show busi-ness. All were (and are) fingers-crossed, one-in-a-million propo-sitions. But the Internet and re-ality television—and the life-style trends they have helped tocultivate this decade—haveadded a number of paths to pub-licity, if not prominence:

n You can write a blog—shar-ing personal secrets in captivat-ing prose or espousing stridentviews on current events. You de-velop an audience as you buildyour media image, both ofwhich you leverage into a book,movie or talking-head deal—orall of the above if your agent(and of course by now you haveone because you’re a brand) isgood.

Archetypes: Ana Marie Cox,who went from free-lancing toInternet renown as the politicalblogger Wonkette to the book“Dog Days” to regular appear-ances on cable talk shows. OrJulie Powell, whose blog aboutcooking every recipe in JuliaChild’s “Mastering the Art ofFrench Cooking” became thebook “Julie & Julia: 365 Days,524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment,”which became the movie “Julie& Julia.” (Around the time ofthe book’s publication, Ms. Pow-ell cheated on her husband andwrote about it in a memoir thatcame out this month, “Cleaving:A Story of Marriage, Meat andObsession.”)

n You can lead a privilegedlife in a cool location and let

cameras film your every heart-break and catfight while you arewearing cute clothes and fre-quenting hip night clubs. You ex-ploit the voyeuristic tendenciesof a nation of teenagers andtwentysomethings (OK, andthirtysomethings) to the pointwhere you can’t even eat scram-bled eggs at a sidewalk café inLos Angeles without paparazzistaking you out—and that’seven before you write the best-selling novel based on yourcharmed, exploited life thatgets optioned for a movie.Think Lauren Conrad of “La-guna Beach,” “The Hills” and“L.A. Candy.”

n You can have a famous lastname, star in a reality-TV pro-gram as well as a widely distrib-uted sex tape, exit cars indeli-cately without appropriate un-dergarments, and cash in onyour notoriety through theworlds of licensed merchandiseand personal appearances. SeeParis Hilton.

Everybody Is a StarEven many of you who

missed or opted out of actualstardom still produced “You:The Movie” this past decade.You (maybe a couple hundredthousand of you if not more)wrote screenplays of your life—called blog entries or Twitterfeeds. You filmed both para-mount and mundane eventswith gadgets that grew smallerand cheaper. Sometimes you ed-ited these trailers on iMovie orFinal Cut Pro before you postedthem to your blog or Facebookpage, or you just sent them topeople via email (how 1990s ofyou). And you created your ownsoundtrack with iPod playlists.

Of course, if you’re going tobe a star, you need to look thepart. This was the decade thatthe luxury market, and red-car-

pet looks, came to you. (Also:Botox and teeth-whitening.)

Previously the domain of thevery wealthy, labels like Chris-tian Dior, Gucci and Pradaramped up their selling of rela-tively affordable purses, shoesand sunglasses. Karl Lagerfeld,the enigmatic creative directorfor Chanel best known for cou-ture and tweed ensembles thatretail for thousands of dollars,designed a line for the discountfashion chain H&M—openingthe gates to other designerswho are happy to do as Lager-feld does.

Consider Rodarte, the labelwith a famous fondness for theavant-garde, whose pieces havebeen worn by Reese Wither-spoon, Natalie Portman andFirst Lady Michelle Obama. Itdesigned a line that is on salenow at Target. (Rodarte so ac-tively tries to align itself as out-side of the fashion establish-ment that the sister-designersconsider as their muse a 14-year-old blogger who lives in subur-ban Chicago.)

Clothiers to the HollywoodA-list have even grown willingto dress your children. StellaMcCartney—daughter of Paul,BFF of Gwyneth Paltrow, Ma-donna and Kate Moss—has de-signed a line for Gap Kids. Websites like whowhatwear.comand magazines like Lucky havetold you exactly what to buy tocopy a particular celebrity’slook. ABS has knocked-offdresses worn by Oscar nomi-nees in stores nearly before thelast award is handed to a teary-eyed starlet.

Behind the ScenesBut the celebrity current

flowed both ways. It’s not justwe who are like them. This wasthe decade that saw an overhaulof Us Weekly, which introduced

us to the idea that “Stars,they’re just like Us!” The maga-zine packed its pages with pho-tographs of celebrities in theirsweatpants at the supermarket.By doing so, it inspired a genera-tion of citizen-journalists andcellphone photographers whorecorded stars, often at theirmost frumpy and makeup free.

Perhaps to spite the meddle-some weeklies—which traffic inJon and Kate gossip as well asthat surrounding which celeb-rity is adopting from whichThird-World country—many ofthe most famous movie, TV, mu-sic and political stars have be-gun to communicate directlywith their fan bases through so-cial-media networks. More of-ten than could have been imag-ined 10 years ago, the middle-man between you and celebri-ties is being removed.

When Paula Abdul an-nounced she was leaving “Amer-ican Idol,” she did so via Twit-ter. Sarah Palin routinely cir-cumvents journalists, makingstatements on her Facebookpage. Taylor Swift offers accessto the lifestyle of the rich and fa-mous in her Twitter feed; re-cently she wrote, “At the fancyhotel, I may have broken thefancy curtains because I didn’tknow they have a fancy electricbutton you push to close them.Hm.”

As aligned as you and celeb-rity became this past decade,the famocracy still exerciseddiscretion. Not even captivat-ing the nation with a Mylar bal-loon or splaying your French-manicured nails across thechest of Vice President JoeBiden for a state-dinnerphoto-op will automaticallyguarantee a reality-show deal—although they might encouragecriminal charges and a federalinvestigation.

Lauren Zalaznick,NBC Universal

Ten Years of 15 MinutesThe Web and Reality TV Helped Make Fame a Commodity

Billy Corgan,singer/guitarist

Somehow, 9/11 broke down awall to privacy. It led people to say,“Everything is fair game. You wantto put a chip into my head? Youwant to know everything about mylife? Then don’t lecture me aboutputting myself on the Internet.”

A floodgate opened 10 yearsago from a tragic event, and it wasturbocharged by technology andaccessibility. At the same time the

obsession with fame and fortune has been a longstanding preoccupation.Reality television not only is a very acceptable form of entertain-

ment, it’s a highly gratifying form of entertainment for viewers.It’s not just that these are outsized characters that happen to be real. It’s

about an actual hunger to see drama with an arc and resolution. To all thepeople who say, “I don’t need to see that on TV,” I say, “I don’t need to seethat guy’s gross feet at the airport.” What goes around comes around, pal.

—Ms. Zalaznick is president of NBC Universal Women& Lifestyle Entertainment Networks.

It’s all about the Internet. Musi-cally, I think it really affects theidea of creating a body of work.It’s sort of made everything abouthaving a moment.

Just having a great songdoesn’t seem to be enough any-more—there has to be a greatstory, a controversy, because peo-ple just don’t have enough time. Igrew up in the shadow of the ’50s

and ’60s where the singles market, where it being about one song, hadpassed, and it was more about albums and a body of work. Now, ca-reers are made and broken one song at a time. It has a reductionistaspect to it.

But if you look at who really winds up surviving on the artistic battle-field, it’s those who somehow maintain a level of inner integrity. Thingsof quality will be more successful over the long haul, so you have to sortof be able to ride the wave.

—Mr. Corgan is lead singer and guitarist of The Smashing Pumpkins.

1999 2009

BOOK SALESAdult and children’shard-covers andpaperbacks

E-BOOK SALESAdult and children’s

177.1201.6

billion

’09

’99

MUSIC DOWNLOADSNet retail value of albums and singles

CDS AND SINGLESNet retail value

$13.04 BILLION

$5.74

$184 MILLION

$1.59 BILLION

Est.

As

of O

ct.

'09'99

$3.70 BILLION $4.27

'08'99

'08

'04

'09

'02

27.2

32.7million

'08/’09'99/’00

$2.1 MILLION

$130.7

'06Jan.

'09Nov.

34%

1.2%

5.95 BILLION

'99

39.85 '09

Sources: Recording Industry Association of America (music); The Nielsen Company (TV and DVR); U.S. Postal Service (mail); IDC (e-mail); Association of American Publishers (books); The Doneger Group, Amazon, NPD Group, Best Buy (1999/2009 style) Note: Primetime TV season, runs from September to May. Books include mass-market books. Most 2009 data through November.

That Was Then This Is Now

Illustration by Viktor KoenSarah Slobin and Juliet Chung/The Wall Street Journal

It was a decade when e-books, e-mail, e-music, and e-everything-else made it seem easier to have whatever we want whenever we wanted.

T.V. VIEWERS

Households tuned in to prime-time

networks

DIGITAL VIDEO

RECORDERS Percentage of all

U.S. TV homes

DAILYEMAIL

Worldwide avg.person-to-

personPIECES OF MAIL Total U.S. PostalService volume

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, December 21, 2009 R7