33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking

Chapter 4 The Strength Of The Microcelebrity

When Nintendo introduced its wii video game console in 2006, It was banking on new technology and a unique interface to shift the tides of the traditional “more processing power = better games” ideal of the gaming industry. While Nintendo was challenging the gamers’ idea of what makes a system worth playing, a graduate student from Carnegie Mellon University was using the same system to challenge the public’s notion of what makes somebody an expert.

Johnny Chung Lee spends his days working on, as he puts it, “creating enabling techniques that can significantly increase the accessibility of technology.” In 2007, Lee began working with Nintendo’s popular Wii system and with its remote controller, ...