June 15 - Back in the 1990s, a well-known computer scientist had an unusual way of introducing himself to women. According to industry lore, the brilliant but socially awkward technologist would sidle up to women at hotel bars and say: “Do you know who I am? I’m famous on the Internet.”

The tactic was not typically successful.

The computer scientist either had a sly sense of humor or badly miscalculated the value of Internet fame. Being famous exclusively on the Internet has always been worth considerably less than real world celebrity. It doesn’t get you past any velvet ropes, onto Oprah’s guest sofa or entice the paparazzi into following you.

But notoriety on the Net is being pursued with increasing vigor these days. Companies cultivate it. Bloggers pursue it. Search engines and measurement sites like Technorati  (www.technorati.com) and Blogdex (www.blogdex.net) aim to quantify it. Since fame equals attention, and attention draws visitors—which can be converted into dollars through online advertising—fame on the Internet can directly generate money. It may or may not translate into romantic success at a hotel bar, but being famous on the Internet is beginning to grant plenty of other benefits.

Only a few years ago, fame on the Internet was more closely associated with infamy than achievement. Internet celebrities rocketed across the firmament like shooting stars, propelled by their very public embarrassments. In 1999, a Turkish man named Mahir turned himself into an online celebrity with a Web site that greeted visitors, “I kiss you!!!!!” and asserted his own studliness in badly broken English. A month later, a dot-com was treating him like their new mascot and flying him around the world.

In 2001, a Carlyle Group trader, Peter Chung, sent his friends an e-mail from his new office in South Korea, lewdly bragging of his hedonistic lifestyle on the company nickel. The message spread around the Internet like wildfire and cost the trader his job, lifestyle and anonymity.

In 2003, 15-year-old Ghyslian Raza of Quebec trumped them all by pretending to engage in a “Star Wars” light-saber death match in front of a running video camera at school. The video was discovered by classmates, uploaded to the Web file-sharing service Kazaa and viewed by millions. The Web community felt so badly about the kid’s resulting humiliation that it took up a collection and bought him an iPod. Internet fame was often not sought out or cultivated, but caught—like a debilitating seven-day virus.

But now it’s suddenly more respectable.

The same self-publishing tools—Moveable Type, Blogger—that fueled the blogging phenomenon have created a more enduring variety of Internet fame. Online personalities set up sites, build audiences and slowly accumulate notoriety. Web celebrities can architect their own ascent and stick around for awhile.

Internet fame still remains different than real fame in many ways. To achieve real fame, you must please the masses. Internet fame is most efficiently attained by appealing to a sophisticated niche audience, then growing the fan base from there.

Real celebrities get confronted by admirers on the street and in restaurants. Internet celebrities are more likely to be interrupted at home, by megabytes of unsolicited e-mail from people who think they have a personal relationship with them. Internet fame can also be cultivated almost entirely by yourself, with a PC, lots of free time and some ingenuity. There are no intermediaries, and you get to choose exactly how much of yourself you reveal. The masses vote on your worthiness with their attention.

Real fame, as everyone knows, is achieved either by getting entangled in a high-profile murder case or dating Paris Hilton. If those options aren’t available to you, you can also eat frogs on a reality TV show. But make sure you have a good agent and be prepared for the fickleness of the mainstream media, which chooses its own stars.

The growing number of crossover personalities suggest that Internet fame is beginning to carry greater substance, and may be a pathway to real fame. Web provocateur Matt Drudge paved the way. Among other bloggers following in his footsteps, Ana Marie Cox of Washington gossip blog Wonkette (www.wonkette.com) regularly appears on cable news networks and has been profiled in numerous offline publications.  

The stream flows the other way, too. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” actor Wil Wheaton and former MTV VJ Adam Curry once tasted the fruits of real fame, but now labor primarily in the orchards of Internet fame with their own popular blogs.

Arianna Huffington recently attempted to merge these two worlds with a blog, The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com), featuring media stars and Hollywood celebs opining on current events. The effort feels a bit discordant, which suggest that Internet fame still suffers when juxtaposed to real fame. Why would Warren Beatty waste his time courting Internet fame when for 40 years he’s availed himself of the sumptuous luxuries of the real thing?

But here’s one overriding similarity between online and real world celebrity. Those that curry Internet fame seem to have a conflicted relationship with it. This dynamic was abundantly on display last month, in the hand-wringing surrounding Blogebrity.com, a new site started by a pair of University of Southern California graduates. The site was a submission to the Contagious Media Contest, sponsored by the New York-based nonprofit Eyebeam to gauge which new Web sites could generate the most visitors and blog links. Using admittedly subjective criteria, the Blogebrity team divided a few hundred bloggers into A, B and C lists—exactly the kind of discriminatory taxonomy that organizes our notions of fame in the real world.

The site provoked intense reaction, much of it critical. For example, Zero Boss (www.zeroboss.com) blogger Jay Allen (a B-lister) complained on his site, “Why would anyone hate bloggers enough to want to make celebrities out of them?” Others primarily seemed unhappy about their placement on the list, or total lack of inclusion. Several tried to lobby for promotions and a few sent hostile e-mails, according to the Blogebrity founders.

Still, the site was hugely popular. More than 100,000 people visited in three weeks and 490 blogs linked to it, good enough for a $1,000 prize in the contest. The Blogebrity founders note that even those who complained about the blunt hierarchy linked to the list and touted their own status. “A lot of bloggers want to reject the notion that they are celebrities,” says cofounder Kyle Bunch. “At the same time, everyone wants to be recognized.”

Even though the competition is over, the Blogebrity team plans to turn their Web site into a business. They envision a day when bloggers and other Internet personalities get so famous, regular people recognize them from their Web site photos, sidle up to them in bars and buy them a drink. Now, that’s fame.