The Lady Gaga-Farmville Synergy: Who Gets Paid?
What I don’t understand about the future, AKA the present, is: well, who’s zooming who? Take a “brand synergy moment” like Lady Gaga premiering her new album in Farmville, which, if you are new to the Internet, is some kind of “time management” game on Facebook where you grow crops. So who pays whom for the honor? Gaga gets an enormous, frightening, keyed-in audience; Farmville gets exclusive “added value.” Maybe nobody pays anyone? Is this what Tina Brown wanted in the 90s? Also, between this, her abandoned Target promotion, the terrible new song and everything else, has anyone ridden the steep sine wave of exciting fame to slavish corporate sadness faster? It seems like only yesterday she was making out with ladies in prisons and now she’s helping people raise virtual sheep.