The entire social media economics is completely changing. In the past, brands would endorse celebrities to boost sales and their reputation. Nowadays it is about ‘who makes the best content and/or who is the prettiest”.
Youtube, Instagram, Vine and Facebook are the leading platforms from which (internet) celebrities are born. The early birds do not wait for the white paper to come out. No, they just figure it out themselves. In which case they create their own content and post it on one of these platforms.
Instagram for example is a clear case of who had the most interesting perspective, who looks the prettiest or who created the most interesting piece of content. Thereby the amounts of followers increases the value of you social media account on a certain platform. An article from the guardian explains this with examples. The same thing with Youtube, they call it vlogging, some people earn a lot of money making just videos.
The business models are not yet solid and there is certainly room for improvement, nevertheless, if you are a content creator or you are just really good at what you are doing. Chances are that you can make a nice second income, besides being the cashier at your local supermarket 😉