To view the video, click here.

“Fashion is a unique industry that combines business, the arts, society and the media. All these elements are featured in the core of what makes Fame Game tick,” said Tatiana Platt, Chief Executive Officer of Fame Game. “The designers that ply their talents in growing their brands in the media stand to gain the most in the end. Whether it is by supporting charitable organizations or enlisting celebrity spokespeople, the designers with the most active labels in the media win out.”

Highlights from this year’s Fashion Week Top Movers and Shakers include:

• Top Ranked Fashion Designers: (1) Marc Jacobs, (2) Calvin Klein, (3) Diane Von Furstenberg, (4) Donna Karan, (5) Zac Posen, (6) Vera Wang, (7) Tory Burch, (8) Tom Ford, (9) Nicole Miller, (10) Carolina Herrera. Honorable Mentions: Cynthia Rowley, Kenneth Cole, and Peter Som.
• Top Models: (1) Helena Christensen, (2) Naomi Campbell, (3) Heidi Klum, (4) Iman, (5) Karolina Kurkova, (6) Natalia Vodianova, (7) Petra Nemcova, (8) Milla Jovovich, (9) Carol Alt, (10) Jessica Stam. Honorable Mentions: Lydia Hearst, Maggie Rizer, and Kate Moss.
• Top Fashion Photographers: (1) Bruce Weber, (2) Patrick Demarchelier, (3) Gilles Bensimon, (4) Sante D’Orazio, (5) Nigel Barker, (6) Mario Testino, (7) Steven Klein, (8) David LaChapelle, (9) Steven Meisel, (10) Annie Liebovitz.

Expect to see these people in the forefront of Fashion Week coverage:

•  Top Fashion Media Power Players: (1) Anna Wintour (Vogue), (2) Fern Mallis (IMG), (3) Linda Fargo (Bergdorf Goodman), (4) Glenda Bailey (Harper’s Bazaar), (5) Ingrid Sischy (Interview), (6) Amy Fine Collins (Vanity Fair), (7) Linda Wells (Allure), (8) Cindi Leive (Glamour), (9) Roopal Patel (Bergdorf Goodman), (10) Plum Sykes (Vogue).

• Top NYC Fashionistas: (1) Tinsley Mortimer, (2) Olivia Palermo, (3) Fabiola Beracasa, (4) Genevieve Jones, (5) Zani Gugelmann, (6) Meredith Melling Burke, (7) Amanda Hearst, (8) Byrdie Bell, (9) Kelly Killoren Bensimon, (10) Allison Sarofim. Honorable Mentions: Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, and Emma Snowdon-Jones.

• Top NYC Male Socialistas: (1) Derek Blasberg, (2) Liam McMullan, (3) Kristian Laliberte, (4) Mark Ronson, (5) Fabian Basabe, (6) Mark Gilbertson, (7) Peter Davis, (8) Euan Rellie, (9) David Chines, (10) Luigi Tadini. Honorable Mentions: Carlton de Woody, and Antony Todd.
• Top Connected New Yorkers: (1) Andrew Saffir, (2) Bettina Zilkha, (3) Tinsley Mortimer, (4) Fabiola Beracasa, (5) Debbie Bancroft, (6) Ann Dexter Jones, (7) Zac Posen, (8) Zani Gugelman, (9) Amy Sacco, (10) Carlos Souza.
• Top Actresses: (1) Anne Hathaway, (2) Claire Danes, (3) Katie Holmes, (4) Lindsay Lohan, (5) Rosario Dawson, (6) Uma Thurman, (7) Penelope Cruz, (8) Jennifer Hudson, (9) Meryl Streep, (10) Mischa Barton. Honorable Mentions: Gina Gershon, and Kate Hudson.
• Top Reality TV Stars: (1) Nina Garcia (Project Runway), (2) Heidi Klum (Project Runway), (3) Olivia Palermo (The City), (4) Kelly Killoren Bensimon (Real Housewives of NYC), (5) Tim Gunn (Project Runway), (6) Bethenny Frankel (Real Housewives of NYC), (7) Padma Lakshmi (Top Chef), (8) Thom Filicia (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy), (9) Whitney Port (The Hills), (10) Jill Zarin (Real Housewives of NYC). 
• Top Power Couples: (1) Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, (2) Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller, (3) Tory Burch and Lyor Cohen, (4) Georgina Chapman and Harvey Weinstein, (5) Melania and Donald Trump, (6) Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, (7) Douglas Hannant and Frederick Anderson, (8) Lauren Bush and David Lauren, (9) Julia and David Koch, (10) Amanda Hearst and Alejandro Santo Domingo.

Fame Game (www.famegame.com) is an entertainment network that tracks the most visible members of the cultural landscape; currently the site maintains 200,000 profiles of influential people in the New York City metro area. The website creates public-facing ‘social network’ profiles for influential individuals and organizations based on event photography, news mentions, user generated content, and other offline and online data. Fame Game leverages the content, cultural data, and attention of these individuals and organizations to make high premium PR campaigns thrive online.

Fame game, Stylecaster, Models International, celebrity, famegame.com, 2009 trends, Anna Wintour, Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Fashion Week, Society, Front Row, Models, Fashion Photographers, Reality TV
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For more information:

305 West Broadway, Suite 195, New York, NY 10013
http://www.famegame.com

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Featured Profiles: Hand picked by our staffers, the Featured Profiles In Fame Game will select new profiles to feature on the Home Page in each of the four categories: People, Projects, Parties and Organizations.

Tools: We’ve put a tidy little widget on the homepage that acts as a tease to the full list of who’s rising in each of the six categories.

News Feed: this is a new addition to Fame Game and we’re pretty excited about it. You can see, in real time, who in the Fame Game network has had an article written about them by one of over 14 publications.

We’re taking this winter/spring to improve the data aggregation points for the underlying technology at Fame Game. First and foremost that means increasing the breadth and depth of our news collection. Just a few weeks ago we went from 8 functioning feeds to 42 - from over 17 different publications - as a first and giant leap in the right direction. And yesterday, we started to incorporate these aggregated items into the People Connections section of all our profiles. (see newspaper icons on right, which represent ‘news connections’)

What does this mean you ask? Well firstly it means that we’re increasing the scope of what we consider to be “a connection.” Photos in which two people appear are the obvious first step, but establishing connections between people and organizations based on connections that a curated stable of news organizations make is an entirely different ballgame. It begs so many questions that its not worth confronting all of them here… suffice to say: we’re taking every step to make sure that the inclusion of this type of connection, and others soon to come, remains accountable and appropriate as it informs the Fame Game algorithm.

The common thread between all “connections” here is that they’re established by means of the 3rd party data sources to we collect. While we like to promote interesting and creative individuals/organizations/events - the sources we collect are the ones that determine how things are represented in Fame Game.

Ryan

In the spirit of the renewal that art brings to our lives, we ask not for a bailout, but simply for people to ponder a more playful question: Can financial and social capital elevate the art projects that are designed to elevate society?

Introducing Trust Art, a stock market for cultural renewal.

How it works - Trust Art consists of 10 emerging artists who have created fantastic blueprints for projects that can be realized within one year or less. The artists – Jason Eppink, Propel-her Dance Collective, Facundo Newberry, Justin Tellian, Anne McClain, Dave Olsen, Skewville, Cassie Thornton, Josh Powell, and Michael Rothschild – have each created proposals ranging from a documentary starring everyone in the world to the unearthing of giant pre-historic artifacts from the ocean floor.  The projects on the table are steeped in social, environmental, cultural, and economic value.

Investors will take a share in a Trust Art project, while also sharing word of Trust Art with their social circle. At the end of the year, when each art piece is auctioned, investors will split the proceeds hwith the artist – thereby potentially getting back their initial financial investment, a profit, increased social capital and a whole lot more in return.

Trust Art is an on-line experiment that BBH and Fame Theory hope will help define what is the actual impact of networking on an artists’ market value. At the same time, the project will provide artists the financial and social capital to fund their projects. The project asks whether the hardest to fund art projects can get off the ground with the help of a strong and connected social network?

Jose Serrano-Reyes and Seth Aylmer, two of the founders of Fame Theory, will unveil Trust Art at this week’s TED Conference in Palm Springs. Fame Theory investigates and affects the ways in which cultural innovation is funded, grown, and subsequently proliferated throughout society. The company partners with progressive organizations to help them attract the most connected, trusted, and fastest-rising social networks and cultural movements in any given city at any given time.  Fame Theory operates www.famegame.com, a website that maps and analyzes social connections and media attention.  This information gathered from www.famegame.com will power the Trust Art project.

Fame Theory approached BBH because of their expertise in creating interesting and new ideas and their skill in translating those visions into actual brands.  BBH New York then tapped Squarespace, a web publishing company known for powering tens of thousands of sophisticated websites for businesses, bloggers, and professionals worldwide, as the ultimate solution to build the Trust Art website using their incredible platform.

Phase 1 of the website launches Friday February 6th at TED Palm Springs

You can explore Trust Art on www.trustart.org.

About  Fame Theory
Fame Theory LLC is an ensemble of artists, economists, technologists, and business individuals whose work fundamentally consists of investigating and affecting the ways in which cultural innovation is funded, grown, and subsequently proliferated throughout culture. Fame Theory operates Fame Game (famegame.com), a rapidly-growing website that maps and analyzes social connections and media attention to help  promote meaningful ideas, people, and organizations in culture.

About BBH New York
BBH New York is a full-service advertising agency with clients that include ALL, Axe, Becel, British Airways, Johnnie Walker, GMAC, Levi’s, LG, Mentos, Miller Lite, NYC & Company, Promise, Vaseline, Virgin Mobile and vitaminwater. Further information is available at our website, www.bartleboglehegarty.com

About Squarespace
Squarespace, Inc. is a privately held publishing software company. Since its inception in 2003, has blossomed into a product that powers tens of thousands of sophisticated websites for businesses, bloggers, and professionals worldwide. Squarespace is defined by their insistence on software that provides an unparalleled user experience - every pixel is engineered and animated to be flawless. Squarespace was conceived to be — and will remain — a departure from the sea of free products and services that clutter today’s web marketplace. Learn more at www.squarespace.com

NEW YORK, N.Y. – December 29th, 2008:  Politicians, magazine editors, and fashion moguls were among the overall top ranked movers and shakers in New York City according to Fame Game’s annual lists of top content across more than 10 categories for 2008. Fashionistas and socialites continued to be hot topics for searchers as well, and they dominated many of the top content categories.

Fame Game is able to measure and analyze the overall attention of people, organizations, and parties in three different ways: through the use of its proprietary algorithm which takes into account public media, news and editorial mentions, user generated content, and attention on Fame Game (“Attention score”), through the internal search queries users are making on the site (“Search trends”), and through the individual profiles receiving the largest volume of web traffic on Fame Game (“Most Visited Profiles.”) Learn more about the algorithm and ranking system by visiting the about page.

“The profiles that people are visiting on Fame Game are a strong reflection of what is happening in the offline world, breaking news stories, and even fashion trends,” said Jen Novak, Chief Executive Officer of Fame Game. “People were clearly focused on the election this year, but even with sour economic news in the latter part of the year, we still saw a growing fascination with philanthropy, luxury and fashion.”

Highlights from this year’s top content include:

ATTENTION: HIGHEST RANKED 2008

Top Attention Overall: Fashion and Politics Beat Out Society

• In the wake of the economic meltdown, the New York media focused more on politicians and fashion moguls than the socialites and pseudo celebrities of years past. Mayor Bloomberg (1) takes the top spot, followed by Anna Wintour of Vogue (2), Derek Blasberg of Style.com and Women’s Wear Daily, socialite Fabiola Beracasa (4), designer Marc Jacobs (5), publicist Kristian Laliberte (6), Lindsay Lohan (7), Martha Stewart (8), socialite Emma Snowdon-Jones (9), and finally, Paris Hilton (10). Other notables: Tinsley Mortimer (12), Calvin Klein (15), the newest cast member of “Real Housewives of New York City,” Kelly Killoren Bensimon (18).

Top Fashion Designers: Social Designers Lead the Charge

• Marc Jacobs (1) remains in the limelight with his constant party hopping, followed tightly by socialite-turned designer Tory Burch (2) and the original wrap dress innovator Diane von Furstenberg (3).  Zac Posen (5) and Peter Som (10) climb their way into the top 10. New York designers Cynthia Rowley (11) and Nicole Miller (12) just barely miss the top 10.

Top NY Politicos: New York Locals Win the Race, Scandal Propels Spitzer to New High

• Mayor Bloomberg (1) takes the cake with the number one spot, followed closely by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (2), and Senator-Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton (3). Hillary Clinton’s husband Bill takes the number 5 spot, while Eliot Spitzer (6) rises to the top 10 in the wake of scandal.

Top Magazine Editors: Fashion and Home

• Anna Wintour of Vogue keeps her reign as queen bee taking the number one spot, while Martha Stewart (2) takes the number 2 spot and Glenda Bailey (3) of Harpers Bazaar comes in slightly behind. Other notables: David Zinczenko (5) of Men’s Health and the Abs Diet empire and Graydon Carter (6) of Vanity Fair slips out of the top five.

Top NY Patrons of the Arts/Philanthropy: New York Power Scene

• Gillian Miniter (1), Somers Farkas (3), and Beth Rudin de Woody (4) show that art and society are still intertwined as they continue to dominate the New York power scene. Other notables: Highest ranked male “patron” Mark Gilbertson (5) and Valesca Guerrand Hermes (8.)

Top New York Famous Children: Ann Dexter Jones’ Brood Monopolizes at the Top

• Three of the children of Ann Dexter Jones fill out the top 10: Designer Charlotte Ronson (5), DJ and Lindsay Lohan girlfriend Samantha Ronson (9), and music producer Mark Ronson (10). Not surprisingly, the top spot is taken by Ivanka Trump, and 3 Hearsts show up as well: Lydia Hearst (3), Amanda Hearst (7), and Gillian Hearst Simonds (8).

Top Movers and Shakers: High Profile Divorces and Child Custody Spats

• Drama around the divorce between Christie Brinkley (1) and Peter Cook (5) drives them both into the top 10. And the custody fight over Caleigh Perelman puts father Ronald Perelman (2) and mom Patricia Duff (3) prominently in the local news and online.

Top News Anchors/Media Personalities: Evening Anchors Beat Out Morning Co-Hosts

• CBS anchor Katie Couric (1) takes the top spot, followed tightly by Barbara Walters (2) and Anderson Cooper (3). Other Notables: Morning show stars Al Roker (4) and Matt Lauer (7) are not far behind.

Top Business Moguls: Trump vs. Murdoch Reign Supreme

• Donald Trump’s (1) TV promotion propels him slightly ahead of Rupert Murdoch (2), while Harvey Weinstein (3), Barry Diller (4), and Jeff Zucker (5) round out the top five list.

Top New York Newspaper Gossip Columnists/Society Contributors: Niche Media is King, But the Dailies Hold Their Ground.

• Grande dame Debbie Bancroft (1), ranks at the top, with the top 10 heavily weighted by the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Other notables: R. Couri Hay (2) and Jeff Slonim (3), both contributors to Niche Media publications.

Top NY Media Power Brokers (Top 5): Page Six Dominates

• Richard Johnson (1), Editor of Page Six for the New York Post retains his stronghold. Youthful newbie Jared Kushner (2) comes in at number 2 with his New York Observer. Other notables: Two Internet mavens make it to the top 5: Tina Brown with The Daily Beast (3), and Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post (4).

Top Artists (Top 5): Modern Artists Keep the Media’s Attention

• Abstract artist Hunt Slonem (1) comes in on top followed by well-known extremist Jeff Koons (2).  Julian Schnabel (3) and Ross Bleckner (4) take number 3 and 4, while Damien Hirst (5) closes out the list.

Top Authors (Top 5): New York Society Chronicles and Cameos

• Candace Bushnell secures the top position with her latest book, “One Fifth Avenue”, and her TV series, “Lipstick Jungle”. Newcomer Anisha Lakhani (2) makes a surprising landing at number 2 with the release of “Schooled”. Jay McInerney (3) proves that being a regular contributor to New York magazines, and even doing a cameo on “Gossip Girl” can help you hold your own.

Top Gossip Girl Cast Members: Serena on top no more, Real-Life Blair and Jenny reign over Serena in media

• New Yorkers continue to show local support for The CW’s “Gossip Girl” cast. The girls win again: Leighton Meester (1) takes the number one spot, followed by Taylor Momsen (2) and then Blake Lively (3). Male co-stars Ed Westwick (4) and Penn Badgley (5) follow, while Chace Crawford fails to make the top 5.

Top Real Housewives of New York City: Newbie steals the scene

• The cast’s newest addition Kelly Killoren Bensimon (1) rises to the top of the pack, followed by Countess Luann de Lesseps (2) and Bethenny Frankel (3).  Jill Zarin (4) and Alex McCord (5) round out the top 5. Ramona Singer fails to make the top 5.

MOST VISITED OVERALL: LARGEST VOLUME OF WEB TRAFFIC 2008

2008 Most Visited People Profiles Overall

• “The Real Housewives of New York City”’s large volumes of web traffic attests to an ongoing fascination with reality TV, especially when it involves New Yorkers. The “Housewives” are followed closely by a smattering of well known New York socialites including Tinsley Mortimer, Amanda Hearst, and Olivia Palermo. Countess Luann de Lesseps (1) and her husband Count Alexandre de Lesseps (2) take the top 2, followed by cast member Jill Zarin (3) and CNN News Anchor Poppy Harlow (4).

2008 Most Visited Party Profiles Overall

• Fame Game’s co-hosted event (with Volkswagen and Z!NK Magazine): This World is Yours (1) takes the number one spot, followed by the Best Buddies Beach Bash (2), and Russell Simmons’ Art for Life (3) event in East Hampton. Other notables: Disney Channel Games (4) and New York After Dark (7), an event held at the Museum of the City of New York.

2008 Most Visited Organization Profiles: TV, Fashion, and Magazines on top

• Longstanding fashion magazine (and Anna Wintour’s prodigy) Vogue (1) comes in at number one, followed by Niche Media’s Gotham Magazine (2) under the leadership of Cristina Greeven Cuomo. Third place goes to luxury brand Louis Vuitton (3). Other notables: Vanity Fair (4) and Bergdorf Goodman (9).

SEARCH TRENDS: TOP SEARCHES ON FAMEGAME.COM 2008

2008 Top Search Terms: Socialites and media personalities most searched for on FameGame.com

• Paris Hilton (1) comes in as the number one most searched for term, followed by socialites Tinsley Mortimer (2) and Olivia Palermo (3), journalist-turned blogging mogul Julia Allison (4), and controversial publicist Kristian Laliberte (5).

More content and the full lists below. (more…)

Features:

First off, as mentioned in the last post, we’ve added a few new features and functionality for users. Now any registered member of Fame Game can create events and projects to compliment their already existing social record. This also means that you can add yourself to an event that you DID attend, but for which Fame Game has no record (sometimes the photo databases we aggregate don’t collect everyone, and sometimes individuals who atteof cound events don’t end up getting photographed).

The project feature allows you to contribute your own work to Fame Game. Being that Fame Game is a great resource to learn about the most active members of culture  here in New York, we wanted to give all registered members a chance to put up their own projects, apart from the photographs that have been taken of them.

All in all - we want to make sure the players of this game can have the most accountable record online.

Look/Feel:

In case you hadn’t already noticed, we’ve gone ahead and cleaned up and “prettified” most of Fame Game’s interface. We’ve also taken the liberty of making some of the calculations that contribute to the daily ranking and attention score of its players public and visible. Now you can see exactly how you stack up and why - hopefully giving you some insight on how to improve your standing and that of your projects and things you care about.

The prettier face of the profile pages has also separated the Search Box from the rest of the page, giving more room for all the fun projects, events, media mentions and connections of all the players’ profiles.

Membership:

Because the baseline for membership into Fame Game has traditionally been event attendance, we realized we were only tracking part of this culture — which, in our estimation, really wasn’t fair. With the simple redesign we enacted, we’ve opened up the doors to Fame Game. The bouncer (so to speak) is still checking ID’s, but if you can prove you know someone inside, then he’s happy to let you in. You can see the new application by visiting the Fame Game Join Page

In the coming months we’ll be improving the functionality of Fame Game for members as well as providing a few opportunities for those who feel that they should be accounted for in the Fame Game community (but aren’t) to play along. We’re also revising Fame Game’s ANDY algorithm to be more accountable for other New York media sources, and further weighting the user generated content submissions. Because Fame Game can’t track every New York item, we’re hoping this will make the process a bit more democratic.

Until then!

Ryan

ryan [at] famegame

As such, we might as well get right to it: Fame Game is getting a ton of traffic and it has slowed the site down us down to a crawl!!! This is a bit like the problem we encountered during the winter, except that we’re finally building out the infrastructure that will allow us to grow much much quicker. We’re constantly working to improve the experience and meet demand, so please bear with us. It will be over soon, I promise.

As always, if you have any questions please write to me at rbrown [at] famegame.

Ryan

6-11-08
Famegame.com , the website owned and operated by media company Fame Theory LLC, has seen explosive growth over the past few months and continues to expand both its member base and its features. This week, Fame Game released the beta tag on its “Movers and Shakers” feature, a feature which tracks and publishes the fastest rising individuals in specific industries according to the Fame Game ANDY algorithm. ANDY is a proprietary technology tool that measures and analyzes media and press mentions, event photography, user-generated content, and other offline and online data sources to find the most prominent, influential, talked about people across the culture industries in New York.

“Movers and Shakers” takes the top 3,000 people in the system each week, classifies them according to six industries – Arts, Society and Philanthropy, Fashion, Media and Digital, Entertainment, and Business – and then calculates which top five individuals in each category were the fastest rising from the previous 7 days rankings. Jen Novak, CEO of Fame Theory says, “Fame Game continues to look for innovative ways to classify, categorize, and quantify the various segments of the ‘culture industry’ in New York City. Movers and Shakers is just another way to cross cut the data that we automatically gather on a real-time basis.” The Fame Game algorithm picks up on trends already evident in the media from the prior week, such as a movie premiere. For example, Kim Catrall; was the fastest rising individual in “Entertainment” last week, which can be attributed to the premiere of the Sex and the City movie. This week’s Movers and Shakers includes prominent names such as Nadja Swarovski, Eva Mendes and Victoria Beckham, as well as up and comers such as fashion designer Alexander Wang, Czech-born model Hana Soukupova, and painter/sculptor Kenny Scharf.

In addition to “Movers and Shakers”, Fame Game also recently launched a new feature that allows people to compare any two profiles on the Fame Game system. “Fame Game Match Up” stacks up any two profiles and compares them side by side according to an attention meter, best ranking, current rank, people connections, events attended, and news mentions. Novak says, “This is a fun feature for anyone to play around with and get familiar with the way our system works and how people get attention by supporting causes and projects they care about.”

Fame Game has continued to grow in membership and viewership and has tentative plans to expand to other cities in the fall of 2008. Ultimately, Fame Game seeks to become the next generation PR company – tracking, analyzing, and making visible the ways in which people and ideas become famous. As Fame Theory co-founder Jose Serrano-Reyes notes, “The mission of Fame Game is to unite the social world and the creative world in harmony under a shared vision, to create a sustainable marketplace for original ideas, and give more leverage to artists, philanthropists, and progressive brands.”

About Fame Game:

FAME GAME is a rapidly-growing website that maps the social and creative networks that drive New York’s cultural economy. FAME GAME creates public facing “social network” profiles for the 100,000+ most visible players in the New York media, and ranks their fame based on their cultural footprint: events attended, influential connections, and media mentions. People and organizations tracked by FAME GAME can claim their profile and actively affect it, both online and off. The result is a multi-media “game” whereby players can increase the score of other people, parties, and projects by lending their fame, thereby increasing their own score/fame in the process. The goal is to influence culture and bring attention to new ideas by playing in the media.

FAME GAME is owned and operated by New York based FAME THEORY LLC, co-founded by Seth Aylmer, Jose Serrano Reyes, and Tatiana Platt.

PR Contacts:

Jennifer Novak, jen [at] famegame

Ryan Brown, ryan [at] famegame

610-742-7107

 p.s., this is Jen, btw. Hi again!