Jordan Reid, 27, is good evidence that fameballing remains attractive, albeit in a down economy. Mediaite's Rachel Sklar has Reid's top-shelf bio: Dalton, Harvard, an abortive LA acting career that took her to Law and Order (here) and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, marriage to a Yalie indie rocker, then the law firm where protocelebrity pimp Allison, in the words of a NonSociety press release, "discovered" her. Now she'll be working for Allison's "lifecasting" startup NonSociety, blogging about "tips on home décor, style, cooking and restaurants, as well as advice for couples in committed relationships."

NonSociety made all of $60,000 last year and lost a shot at a Bravo reality show contract amid the Wall Street implosion. No surprise, then, that the last time we checked the company was trying to recruit a slew of new bloggers like Reid without pay or equity. Reid, in fact, is the prototypical NonSociety recruit — a company ad said it was looking for someone "like [a] 27-year-old Harvard grad housewife married to a rocker." So maybe she nailed down an actual salary. Allison declined to address pay in an interview, telling us only that Reid was under a "fairly standard management contract."

"Management" contract? That implies Reid will live off the revenue she brings into the company, presumably through sponsorship deals. Ouch: Allison has a decent gig endorsing Sony products and fortified water, but before that she had to pay her dues shilling for the likes of Sea World and Dunkin' Donuts. But maybe things will be easier for Reid. Allison insists this is a banner year for NonSociety. "We're making money and it's legit," she told us, before declining to provide hard numbers to back the hype.

NonSociety has enough money, at least, to fortify its executive suite, such as it is: Allison has named her first Gotham roommate Krystal Kahler as titular CEO. Megan Alagna is "Chief Operating Officer." Fancy.

If microcelebrity is making a comeback, then, it is thanks to some intensive care from NonSocieyt's increasingly fancy stable of advertisers. The monster will not be easily slain. And that's putting it optimistically.

(Reid's hire was first reported at Reblogging NonSociety. Lower pic via.)

Full press release:

NonSociety Announces Hiring of Newest Contributor Jordan Reid

NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 13, 2009: NonSociety, an online social platform wherein the contributors share their opinions via their personalities with an interactive audience, announces the hiring of their newest contributor Jordan Reid. Joining current NS contributors and founders Julia Allison and Meghan Asha, Reid's focus will be "Domestic Bliss Done Differently," and will offer tips on home décor, style, cooking and restaurants, as well as advice for couples in committed relationships. The website goes live on September 14, 2009, and can be found at www.jordan.nonsociety.com.

The hiring of Reid marks the next step in the progression of NonSociety as an online venue for experts. Reid is the first of many new contributors to come, each in a different niche, who will share their expertise in their particular field while also giving readers a glimpse into their personal lives.

Lifecasting, as NonSociety calls it, helps readers develop a personal connection to their contributors. Readers get to know and trust contributors' opinions the way they do with their friends. "The synergy of professional expertise and personal divulgence is the backbone of the NonSociety online platform," NonSociety's Chief Operating Officer Megan Alagna says. "It establishes a reader/expert relationship in a way not currently seen in media, making NonSociety the go-to platform for professional branding – and personal journalism which informs, entertains and inspires."

Reid was discovered by Allison at a NYC party. 27 years old and married, with a Harvard degree and killer style, Reid was working at a law firm but longing to turn her hobby - DIY home projects – into a full time gig. Her search for wedded bliss in the city of career obsessed singles stood out to Allison, who immediately dubbed Reid "The Uncommon Newlywed" and convinced her to join the team at NonSociety.

Says Reid: "Am I a chef? No. An interior designer? Hardly. I consider myself a somewhat talented amateur in these arenas, and for me this lifecast is an exciting journey and an on-going learning process. I'm hoping my readers will benefit from seeing someone just like them who is unafraid to try...well, just about anything."

NonSociety founder Allison says, "Jordan is what would happen if a Harvard-educated, twenty-something Martha-Stewart-in-training married a rocker, rode a motorcycle, and refused to wear any skirt that hit below mid-thigh. We're beyond thrilled to have her on board!"

Aside from Reid, NonSociety has brought on young writer and girl-about-town Cary Randolph to cover fashion week. Reid and Randolph mark the first contributors to be hired by NonSociety since the departure of styleblogger Mary Rambin. Allison and Asha (along with Rambin) continue to co-host TMI Weekly, a Next New Networks production airing on NBC's lifestyle channel NY NonStop. NonSociety is expected to grow exponentially as on online media platform in the next few months, bringing on several new contributors in areas like entertainment, fashion and home décor by the end of the year.

Allison has confirmed to us that her "lifecasting" startup, NonSociety, is behind this audacious Craigslist ad. It's already been chewed up and spit out in the blogosphere for, among other things, asking the world for a "vibrant" personality, "ridiculously reliable" work ethic, maybe a Harvard degree and a glamorous spouse in return for no money and no equity. Or, as Allison puts it, "all of the support, the audience, the connections and the PR you need to launch your brand."

It doesn't help that the list of potential lifecasting roles outlined by Allison and her partners sounds like it was ripped from a catalog of stereotypes: "gay, style guy, teen, prom obsessed" ... "alternative lifestyle, interior/exterior design expert" ... "preppy" ... "rapper." As Just Another Brooklyn Blog put it:

Oh, so I can either have some quirky skill, or just enjoy man on man anal sex. In lieu of a resume, should I just send you a picture of me giving another man a reach-around.

If your life fits into a category that Allison and business partner Megan Asha consider brand-able, AND you clear their application process, you'll have the privilege of constantly broadcasting your life for NonSociety through "text, photographs, videos, perhaps music selection, quotes - and beyond." And beyond.

And, who knows, maybe after a few years you can graduate into a paying gig endorsing consumer electronics or "enhanced water." If that doesn't pay the bills, why not start a lifecasting platform of your own? After all, the internet fame game played by Allison and her protocelebrity cohorts might be a deflating bubble, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people still willing to buy into it. It's not like media and financial companies are hiring much these days.

(Pic: TMIWeekly)

Perhaps not, if only because Lyle (née Eric) has been more successful in his overshares. His brother uploads videos of scary knife play and intimate moments to the video website he started, while Lyle runs naked through a forest in a Sigur Rós video, according to New York's The Cut. And we haven't heard anything about Lyle turning up topless at business mixers.

Then again, in Lyle's line of work, that would actually be appropriate. When you're prancing about for the likes of Burberry and Lanvin, you're moving beyond fameballing and toward outright stardom. Big brother could probably learn something from his example.

Yes, it's red. And yes, Allison assures us, it's permanent. As permanent, at least, as her two-year stint as a Time Out New York dating columnist (the magazine now brags of its "Julia-free Sex & Dating section") or her overpaid gig as a Star "editor at large" ("an embarrassment" one editor later sneered).

The fameball is not without her assets; she retains her "lifecasting" Web startup, NonSociety, and a deal with NBC's obscure digital channel New York Nonstop, which gives Allison a toehold into the glamorous world of cable-news punditry (she was on MSNBC just this past Sunday).

But as Allison's fellow protocelebs can attest, fameballing in the midst or a recession and reality TV glut isn't what it used to be. And her business grossed just $60,000 last year, before things got really bad.

So while Allison might say (as she did in a recent instant message to us) "I feel like I haven't been on Gawker in eight weeks; it's making me feel happy / irrelevant" and ask if she's "blacklisted," her real problem isn't grabbing attention. It's making a living, and thus a life, out of it.

UPDATE: Regarding the hair, a tipster adds:

Julia was broadcasting for some really random network from a soccer event at Hudson Terrace last night. While she was still sporting that HIDEOUS one piece (it looked Aladdin-inspired) she's wearing in the pic on Gawker, her new 'do was covered by a huge headband. The reason? Apparently the dye turned BRIGHT RED near her scalp over the course of the day, leaving her with noticeably two-toned hair. It looked entirely heinous. In typical Julia Allison fashion, she was bitching very, very loudly about it. She obviously mentioned that it was Anne Hathaway's colorist that did the job so she "should have known better." Yeah, ok, Julia.

Another choice remark: "I was trying to look like Lindsay Lohan but it ended up like the fifth element!!!"

UPDATE 2: Allison wrote in to say her decision to part ways with Time Out was mutual and that she hadn't "lost" her job, as we had it, or "complained" about not being on Gawker.

Times are tough, and Allison's startup NonSociety has not escaped the bad economy: It's already lost a reality-show deal (Bravo declined to proceed beyond a pilot) and one of its three co-founders. This perhaps helps explain why Allison has become a "featured blogger" for "Social Media Marketing" firm Izea.

Listed on the front page, Allison helps the company advance its mission to "provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for posting social media content about a product, service or website on their blog."

Izea, in other words, pays for posts. In cash. And Allison has started working hard for one of its featured clients, Sea World, which is inviting bloggers to a press junket this week. Today on her NonSociety blog, Allison gushed about her upcoming trip to the marine park with no fewer than five exclamation marks. On Twitter she was a bit more restrained, with just one "!" (the microblogging service limits users to 140 characters, after all).

Neither of those posts included any disclosure of Allison's relationship to Izea or Sea World — even though such disclosure is required by Izea.

After a tipster pointed us evidence of Allison's shilling, we got in touch with her for comment. She's promised to get back to us.

But other bloggers, including all those laid off print journalists hoping to chase their dreams online, can draw a quick lesson: There is still money to be made in blogging, even independently. But you'll have to do some ethical soul-searching. And in the end, you'll have to disclose whatever innovative monetization techniques you settle on. Not eventually, either, but up front, right in that first post. Because if you don't, you'll get caught.

UPDATE: Yes, Allison got paid, but "THIS IS THE FIRST THING THEY HAVE EVER PAID ME FOR." The bastards! More:

Socialite Hearst has, until now, been careful not to go this far; when she did the cover of French Playboy, she was careful to note there was "no nudity for me" and that the publication was "very high fashion." Similarly, the model-heiress emphasized the "high fashion/couture" aspect of her lingerie shoot for an "upscale" panty brand.

Hearst's new topless spread is wrapped, of course, in the same sort of market positioning: She's in an upscale fashion glossy, GQ, and the Italian edition to boot. The model's poses are as stiff as ever, but they're also "low key [and] artistic," according to the blog Drunken Stepfather.

Well, we guess. She's still taking off her shirt, which is way more than her otherwise shameless protocelebrity competitor Julia Allison had to do to get a big Condé Nast cover. How is it the willowy Gotham heiress has been outclassed by a brassy social-climber from the Midwest? By making the same mistake as so many luxury retailers: responding to hard times by cheapening the product in the mind of the consumer. Not necessarily by taking off her shirt — you're only young once, and you might as well take your racy pictures then — but by doing so in such a marginal venue.

UPDATE: And, of course (we should have known), Hearst has gone topless before in an even more obscure venue, which you can see here or here (NSFW links, duh). So she's actually shimmying her way up the stripper pole of minor fame into ever-slightly-classier outlets. Dutch Esquire next? Hearst will make money on both sides of the deal.

(Pics from Italian GQ via Drunken Stepfather)

That's per Page Six. Per the oversharing queen's Twitter, we know Allison was showing the new QB her headband at 2 am in one tweet, and then not posting again until 7:35 am the next morning (see below left).

"Jay is one of the top 10 quaterbacks in the NFL," she wrote a friend. "I didn't know who he was until last night."

Now she knows him.

It's rough time for Allison's "lifecasting" startup NonSociety; one of her three co-founders just split and an option to expand a reality show deal with Bravo expired at the end of February. A little tabloid-fueled traffic bump could come in handy right about now, if only for morale-raising purposes: Allison, it goes without saying, thrives on attention.

The question is whether Allison would allow herself to be called "gross" in order to plant an item like this on Page Six. Not normally. But she kind of needs a "Hail Mary" right now, apparently in more ways than one.

The fired Vimeo founder's latest posting to his video-sharing site is, frankly, frightening. It's also his first in three months.

The comeback, a lipdub of Little Boots' "Meddle," seems innocent enough if you don't watch it closely and completely. "Yay!" wrote one commenter. "You're back"

But about halfway into the video, Lodwick inexplicably swings a knife, which he keeps somewhere off camera. It's only later that Lodwick starts making angry punching motions and using psycho eyes to underline the lyric "you don't know what she hides."

This outburst comes from an on-again-off-again blogger as famous for his emotional volatility as for his prolific oversharing. Lately, his behavior has turned disconcertingly bizarre.

Last summer Lodwick produced a creepy psychedelic video, looking high and nearly catatonic. In January, he turned up at a Web industry networking event shirtless, sweating and flailing his arms. March's internet sex picture seemed an almost pedestrian way of acting out in comparison.

But now there's the knife video. The blade comes out quickly in the excerpt above. A frenetic, apparently naked Lodwick ducks in and out of an enveloping darkness. He's a tortured internet pioneer looking like he's ventured all the way into a new jungle, straight to the heart of dot-com celebrity darkness. He's Colonel Kurtz, and he's seen horrors.

Or maybe Colonel Kurtz was nuts to begin with and just found a way to make us all watch. We probably won't know whether there's anything to learn from the manifest pain of the world's most tortured millionaire until it's too late.

Is the 19-year-old heiress consciously trying to walk in Lindsay Lohan's tear-stained celebrity footsteps, or just kind of accidentally stumbling along them in a drug-addled haze?

Let's review the similarities:

Headline-making lesbian relationship with a DJ. We suspect Lohan and Samantha Ronson are just a bit more serious than Geldof and her buddy Fifi Brown, who DJ together as "Trash Pussies." Geldof and Brown make Facebook quips about getting married; Lohan and Ronson have angry fights throughout New York and London.

Coke. Geldof denied using cocaine but was filmed buying drugs. Cocaine and cocaine rehab rumors have dogged Lohan.

Nude pics. Lohan took off her top for New York magazine in an oh-so-artistic homage to Marilyn Monroe. Geldof took hers off, apparently for a paparazzo, and was featured in an oh-so-artistic tour of her tattoos (sorry, "body art").

Geldof of course is unlikely to take the one big step needed to truly live like Lohan: Earning all that money she blows.

(Pics, from top: via Sun, Getty, via Sun, via News of the World)

The site, as described by BusinessWeek, appears to operate as a defacto blackmail racket: Your "friends" submit "hilarious" pictures of you, often filched from Facebook. If you are in a picture and want it removed, you have to become a member of the site, which costs $20 per month or $50 per year.

Best part: Your "friend" earns a kickback of $10 or $20 if his picture causes you to pay the membership fee.

It's not really worth fighting in court. A violation-of-privacy lawsuit would be prohibitively expensive. And if you're in the picture, you probably didn't take the picture, so you can't make a copyright claim (without lying, which will bring you major fines if caught).

Better to accept the inevitable: Celebrity has been so devalued and democratized that we all have to learn to play the PR games of famous people. That means flooding the market with flattering pictures and blog posts (the equivalent of magazine puff pieces); bullying hostile bloggers and scandal websites (as celebrity flacks do with tabloids and other disfavored publications); and paying the occasional bribe, in the form of anything from flirting to a free lunch to cold, hard cash (like when Michael Phelps reportedly tried to buy those bong pictures).

After a fameballing bender that included (naturally) a dalliance with fellow attention crackhead Julia Allison, Lodwick tried to go cold turkey and quit the internet forever.

Fat chance. The budding young Objectivist now has his own record company, with its own precious blog.

And though Lodwick still abstains from personal blogging, he knows how to get a contact high. Instead of posting videos of himself all tripped out, as he might have done in the past, the former College Humor collaborator showed up to a New York Web networking event with his shirt off and his serial-killer glasses on. Lodwick was, we are told by an attendee, the only half-naked person there. As former Gawker video whiz-kid Nick McGlynn's photoset shows, some other attendees went with blazers and buttoned-down shirts.

Lodwick had to know his pictures would make their way to the Web and, sure enough  (via McGlynn), they have. See shots above and below. Lodwick's unquenchable thirst for attention is starting to worry us slightly. Is he getting desperate? But at least it helps maybe solve a riddle:

We've been trying to figure out the point of protocelebrity at a time of scant reality-TV payoffs and declining Web advertising. Maybe the answer is simpler than we thought: For some addicts, fameballing just feels really, really good.

(Photos by McGlynn)

The ashamed, secret straight male audience for cats, meanwhile, appreciate "shots of attractive women, with their pets nestled near or within cleavage," as LA Weekly put it in a profile of Chris Leavins, the man behind the Web show and blog Cute With Chris, which offers all of the above.

We've only watched a few shows but are kind of already in love with the concept. The Weekly writes that Leavins has three purposes:

• "A spit-in-the-wind mission to counter the cultural flood tides of 'cute.'"
• "Wading through the detritus of pet photos that hold almost no inherent interest to anybody but the pets' owners, and then, using interactive storytelling, finding a narrative infused with more universal meaning than the pet owners could ever have intended."
• "Trying to fathom new ways to use performance to connect to people in the 21st century."

Really, though, we just liked reading through his on-camera ridicule, like

“I miss the old Chris, too. The old Chris would have taken this opportunity to rip you a new asshole for writing such a rude e-mail. The old Chris might have looked into the camera [here, he looks directly into the camera] and said, ‘Gee, Lynette, I wish I was as awesome as you.’ The old Chris would have said, ‘Thank you, Lynette, for taking a little time away from your job making meatball subs at a Quiznos [in a] food court in Wisconsin to let me know that I’m not keeping it real.’ I truly value the opinion of a grown woman who lives with six hamsters and an iguana named Dumbledore. The old Chris would have turned to the other camera and said, ‘Get out of my cult, bitch.’

Unfortunately, Lynette, I’m just too exhausted to do that. I have been trying to sell out for weeks, and let me tell you something, selling out is a lot of work and frankly not very profitable. That’s why I’m not going to say those terrible things about you that I just said. About you. Which are true. You ungrateful whore.

Let’s look at kittens!

And

“I’m only doing this as inspiration to the thousands of women like Deborah, single ladies in their 30s, with three or more cats, who watch Cute With Chris. Don’t give up on your dreams. Throw away your clogs, and believe that somewhere in the space between your 11 cats and your six litter boxes and the 39 squeaky toys on your bed, there is room for a man in your life. Unless you want to turn lesbian, which I would totally recommend. I mean, wouldn’t it be easier just to date another crazy cat lady?”

And

“Thanks for your letter, Madison. Yes, jugs are for juice, and also, lotion does make one slippery. But every parent has the right to decide what their child can or cannot watch, and you need to respect your mother’s decision. However, the flag button on YouTube is meant to protect people from graphic depictions of sex, violence or hate speech. It’s not meant to protect people from plastic horses. In any case, Madison, I think we’ve all learned something from this experience. We’ve learned that when you say innocent things like “jugs” or “Ride me, I’m a horse,” your mother’s mind goes to some very weird places. [Brief pause.] Hey, mama!”

Sample episode above. [Via Fishbowl LA]

After two Minnesota-based publications linked to the Observer profile, some persistent anonymous commenters came out of the woodwork to raise questions about the ambitious blogger's purported background — on the Minnesota website, under the original Observer piece and on our tips email account. Given Sorgatz buddy Lockhart Steele's statement to the Observer that the aspiring Web mogul is "prone to outsized statements," we thought some of the questions warranted further examination.

Did Sorgatz really co-found the High Plains Reader and make $100,000 off its sale?

According to to the Observer, Sorgatz started this alt-weekly "after college" with two friends and cashed out two years later.

Sorgatz, who has positioned himself as the expert on self-promotion, has not referred to himself as a founder of the publication previously — not on LinkedIn, not on Facebook and not in a comment to the MNSpeak discussion thread about the Observer piece. He is alternately "editor," "co-editor," and "editor/publisher."

In his MNSpeak comment, Sorgatz wrote that he started at the publication — as an editor — "maybe a month after it was launched."

Maybe that's why his online resumes list his involvement as starting in 1995 when the paper's Wikipedia entry says it was founded in 1994.

But that doesn't explain why Sorgatz is not listed among the High Plains Reader founders on Wikipedia. And it doesn't explain how he could have started theReader "after college" when this newspaper article indicates he was still a University of North Dakota student in 1997 and even his own resumes state he did not finish school until1996.

Was he a founder of Web Guide magazine? Does such a thing exist? Did he really make $750,000 off of it?

According to articles by the Associated Press and Computer Publishing & Advertising Report, as well as another company's press release, there was a Web Guide magazine in operation at the time Sorgatz has indicated he worked there. It has been described as being started by Dan Beaver, former magazine buyer for Barnes & Noble. It was sold at the time Sorgatz said he cashed out.

Again, Sorgatz does not appear to have been mentioned in the press (based on Nexis searches) in connection with the publication, as a founder or otherwise. On his own resumes, he is "editor," never "co-founder" or such.

It also seems odd that Google can't find any mentions of Web Guide or WebGuide on Sorgatz's oversharey, long-running website. Nor can the site's internal search engine. You'd think if Sorgatz got sorta rich off something like that, he would have mused on the experience at some point.

Did he really buy a condo in an old mansion in Minneapolis?

A comment repeated on both the Observer and MNSpeaks sites claims, "I lived at the Pillsbury house for a few months. We all rented - he did not own it." Sorgatz did not address this statement in his later comments in the same MNSpeaks thread.

The inconsistencies in the Observer article do not prove Sorgatz is a liar. The Observer's Spencer Morgan could have misquoted the press-friendly microcelebrity expert, and indeed Sorgatz has already written, in the MNSpeaks thread linked above, "Oh god, you want an error count? Too many!" It's unlikely, for example, that Sorgatz told Morgan he bought Nintendo Wii game consoles for his nephews when, in fact, he only has nieces.

But it's equally unlikely misquotation and misunderstanding can entirely explain why the Observer's story about Sorgatz is so at odds with the published record.

What's most probable is that the attention-loving fameball took his self-promotion a few steps beyond the boundaries of truth. In the same Observer piece, after all, Sorgatz had no trouble pushing the envelope on discretion, good taste or basic interpersonal decency.

One does not bullshit in a community of pervasive self-publishing — on Tumblrs and Twitter streams, in comments sections and Flickr accounts. Rex Sorgatz, of all people, should know that.

(Photo via Sorgatz's Flickr stream.)

As the attention-obsessed would-be-media-mogul surely intended, today's Observer's profile of him produced a frisson of controversy inside New York's Tumblrocracy before it even hit the street. Is he really dating CNET blogger Caroline McCarthy, as the article implied? Why would he be so callous as to describe his recent ex, former Huffington Post writer Rachel Sklar, as an "exit strategy" from the problem of dating younger women, or portray her as enthralled by the low-grade attention that comes with being part of a blogging power couple?

Sorgatz, who showered the Observer's Spencer Morgan with on-the-record tales of his exploits with young Tumblr girls, courted both the attention and the controversy. It's not clear why: Surely the online consultant and entrepreneur sees what is happening around him. Fellow fameball Julia Allison's reality show deal with Bravo fell through, and her Web venture Non Society is groping for relevance. The television networks are, at last, supersaturated with minor celebrities placed in "reality" scenarios and hardly in the position to bid on more. Either Sorgatz knows something everyone else doesn't about attention economics, or he just can't stop hoarding the stuff

Sorgatz certainly did his best to whip up some drama for Morgan. His Gossip Girl parties, which found their way into Morgan's lede, have been near-desolate on recent occasion. But the Monday shindig bulked up significantly after Sorgatz added this nugget to the invitation:

This time, it's not just an invite, but also a request....

Spencer Morgan of the New York Observer will also be here, because he is profiling me in his "Men of Manhattan" column. (I know, right?) So in addition to coming over and drinking my beer, you have to pretend you really like me.

Having secured something of a crowd, Sorgatz then provocatively mingled his recent ex Sklar with a new squeeze, "Kristen" from the Web show he produces, "I'm Just Sayin'." In fact, the two women ended up sitting next to one another.

Sklar is on the far right in the second-to-last row of people; we're told that is Kristen next to her. The body language is not subtle. (And, yes, that's our very own expressive Richard Blakeley sitting on the couch.)

As if this wasn't enough, Sklar also had to contend with the presence of McCarthy, who as Sklar's relationship with Sorgatz was ending appeared in more and more pictures with scarf-loving Sorgatz on their respective Tumblr and Flickr streams. The two also made prominent appearances together in blogging circles, at "blogger bar" The Magician on the Lower East Side and elsewhere. Rumors that McCarthy had replaced Sklar swirled among friends and put a strain on their relationship.

At the party, post-breakup, Sklar made the mistake of sharing her feelings of awkwardness toward McCarthy in real-time with Allison. Allison, apparently trying to elbow in on Sorgatz's tearmaking, did Sklar the courtesy of quickly summarizing Sklar's text messages in an email to McCarthy, also at the party and soon in receipt of Allison's message.

But Sklar needn't have been worried; McCarthy is said to be seeing Curbed.com publisher and former Gawker staffer Lockhart Steele. Her public flirtation with Sorgatz was believed by friends to serve mutually beneficial ends — McCarthy got to show her ex, Tumblr inventor David Karp, that she had moved on, while Sorgatz got to build on his image as a playboy while passive-aggressively extricating himself from his relationship with Sklar. In any case, McCarthy obliquely denied the Observer's implication she's with Sorgatz on, naturally, her Tumblr.

If the whole thing sounds like an slightly-more-grown-up episode of Gossip Girl, that's because it is, probably by design. The party drama and the McCarthy flirtation, like the Observer piece, is a case-study right out of micro-fame expert Sorgatz's own playbook.

Sklar, by Sorgatz's own admission the more grounded half of the couple, seems to have played an unwitting role in the manufactured drama. "We were a solid couple from day one, and [Sogartz's romp with Tumblettes and a secret blog] was clearly in the past, and so I rolled with it," she wrote to us after the Observer piece was published. "Also, the 'romp' was a 6-month relationship and not some trip through micro-celebrity."

Sklar certainly deserves better than to be called, by her ex in the Observer, "sort of a solution to the problem of a lifestyle that really primarily revolved around 23-year-old Tumblr girls."

Kristen, meanwhile, advances the Sorgatz plot while promoting one of his businesses. Want to find out about the outré playboy's latest conquest? Then watch her Web show!

If Sorgatz wants to be the next Jeff Zucker, this seems like a bizarre way to get there, however many eyeballs his lifestream ultimately attracts. If there's a point to Sorgatz's caddishness, no one has yet deduced it. But plenty of people are content to watch the bonfire in the meantime.

(Top image via Sorgatz on Flickr.)

See, back in the day, Barack Obama was just merrily going along his dorky way, at Occidental, a California college, for hippies. He wore OP shorts (ha!). And he was named Barry.

Then he started hanging out with this Eric Moore, and suddenly Moore is telling him how Barry is a terrible name "for a brother." Next thing you know Obama is going to protest marches and "cultural events" (read: hippie reefer fests), and emphasizing his African Islamic roots with his birth name, Barack.

Obama's been open about his misguided youth, but this guy has pictures. And thanks to an Occidental booster with a videocamera, Ben Smith at Politico and the Jason Linkins at Huffington Post, so does the world. Excerpts from the scandalous video are up top; a photograph missing from the excerpts is below (via HuffPo).

As far as she's concerned, Lacy had it all, 'round about May: A book (about Web 2.0 companies like Facebook), a Web video show, a BusinessWeek column (and gestalt-changing cover story), a blog and of course a Twitter stream. Then she realized no medium was helping another much.

After about 10 years of "worked evenings, sleepless nights, sacrificed relationships and any kind of work/life balance," the tech pundit just wrote a long essay concluding that becoming a brand is overrated because "I can't pull fans and readers across platforms." Also: "brand that hits people fast usually doesn't last."

Oh, sure, Lacy admits, she's making more money, is better prepared for the downturn, has greater name recognition, experiences "amazing once-in-a-lifetime experiences," and, hell, people even stop her in the street to tell her she's awesome, but not in the right way, you see:

I'm stunned by how many people read this blog, but never go to TechTicker. Or how many people watch TechTicker, but have no idea I write a BusinessWeek column. Or how many people follow me on Twitter, but still think I'm on staff for BusinessWeek full-time. Or— I swear to God— the number of people who know me from any of those platforms and say, "You wrote a book?" ...Whenever I get recognized and someone asks if I'm Sarah Lacy, I smile and say yes, but then coyly ask how they know me. Because I've learned it's different every time, and it's never all-of-the-above.

What is wrong with you internet people? Sarah Lacy is working hard so you can fully appreciate her and you're not FULLY APPRECIATING HER IN ALL MEDIA CONSTANTLY.

At this rate she'll never be culturally immortal!

That's the thing about branding yourself: It gets easier to do all the time, and the potential audience is constantly growing. But you're still on the hedonic treadmill, racing to surpass — or even keep up with — all the competition.

L.G.: I guess what I'd like to know is how many projects are in the pipeline, with all the financing in place, versus projects that you may want to do but can't because of the absence of credit and just hugely scary economic times?

I.T.: I think new construction is certainly a challenge in this environment.

L.G.: That's such a euphemism, Ivanka. It's a "challenge"?

I.T.: It's almost impossible.
L.G.: Okay, thank you, I want you to speak frankly to me.

Somebody is touchy! But listen to how Trump, 26, handled this crack of the whip:

I.T.: I understand, but that's not true in all markets, and when you have your construction, when you have your financing in place as we're very fortunate to have in most of the jobs that we currently have out there, it's an incredible advantage in certain perspectives. There was an enormous pipeline of potential projects that I think we all knew a year ago would never ultimately come to fruition but were still perceived as competition in certain marketplaces—competition for retail leases, competition for deposit interests, competition from prospective buyers. Those projects will never get built, and people recognize that. People aren't interested in putting down deposits so that they can wait six years for a developer to put together the financing and ultimately have that locked up in escrow....

She goes on like that. In fact, Trump always goes on like that, for every question. Even for Grove's self-described "backdoor" question and a feisty dig about Trump's investments in Vegas.

As well she should, given that Trump is an executive for an international real estate company. But her fluent PR-speak is a surprising competency for someone (rightly) assumed to be a nepotism beneficiary.

Is it possible Trump really is the smartest of the socialites? It's a low bar, but somebody has to jump it!

There is a far different side to this city; every day is not 73 degrees and sunny, there are no beaches or accessory pets [um, what?? -ed.] and thankfully no-one drives drunk. Manhattan is a city centered on style and sophistication. The place where krispy kreme was invented and anything and everything you could ever desire from Q-Tips to Cipriani’s can be delivered right to your door.

Krispy Kreme actually started, like most delicious fried food products, in the South. In North Carolina, specifically. Serves the willowy heiress right for fancying herself an expert on junk food.

But we still look forward to seeing how Hearst transforms herself. We're betting on some kind of vanity website. Though she's probably bristle at the comparison, Hearst is already sounding like fellow protocelebrity Emily Brill:

The thing the people don’t realize is that it is a system. You don’t have to conform. It is about breaking the mold and reaching inside yourself to discover not what you are and what you are doing but who you could be and all you could accomplish.

The whole thing started with a "tough-love" conversation between Allison and her high school boyfriend Dan, which included observations like the following:

You’re running a business that’s based on selling you as a product. But you’re not a product, you’re a person...

I feel like the Julia that’s on your blog, of all the faces of you, this is the worst. And I’ve seen you at your worst. I feel like this is the result of you being overexposed and burned out by having been slammed so hard. But it’s also a product of your social environment, which I have to say, I find absolutely appalling.”

...At the scariest moments in your life, you’re going to be alone. And then you’re going to have to ask yourself, am I really a success? Am I proud of myself? There’s so much more to that than whether your business succeeds, than whether you’re rich or not. It’s about being a good friend, a good parent, a good family member.”

We know all this, by the way, because while Dan was telling Julia about how dangerous it is to securitize her life on an oversharey blog, Allison raced to grab a pen and write everything down so she could publish the phone conversation on her oversharey blog.

Which is just the sort of predictable commitment to shareholder value (and distraction) this economy needs right now! Don't ever change, Julia. (No seriously, we'll downgrade your overshares or something.)

(Pictured: Allison cozying up to that other self-inflated personal media brand, Martha Stewart, via Mary Rambin.)

[Julia Allison, Megan Asha]