Internet self-promotion Tom Smith

How to be famous for nothing.  Though actually, Julia Allison would not be famous were she not cute, at least, not unless she was also something else.  Cute goes a long ways in this world of ours. 

And there's this in the article in Wired with my interpolations:

It's easy to dismiss Allison as little more than a rank narcissist (IMHO narcissism is a life style choice like any other) — and many of her vocal online critics are happy do just that. But come on, admit it: You've spent a good half hour trying to pick out the most flattering photo to upload to your MySpace page. (Uh, actually, I don't have a MySpace page, but I did pick a picture I thought was cool for my Facebook page, but it did not take a half hour) You struggle to come up with the mot juste to describe your Facebook status. (No, I think mine is on the default right now) You keep a bank of self-portraits on Flickr (people do that?) or an online scrapbook on Tumblr or a running log of your daily musings on Blogger. (I don't like to be photographed, my online scrapbook is not that and is years out of date, but yes I do blog) You strategically court the gatekeepers at StumbleUpon or Digg  (Nope.)  You compare the size of your Twitter-subscriber rolls to those of your friends. None of my friends twitter and if they did I wouldn't read them. I think Twitter is psychotic.)  You set up Google Alerts to tell you whenever a blogger mentions your name. (I don't but that's a good idea.)  See? Self-promotion is no longer solely the domain of egotists and professional aspirants. Anyone can be a personal branding machine. (I agree.  Self-promotion is in fact a painful duty, especially for those of us who don't have much cute to work with.)