For years we’ve complained that one has had to go back to the early 2010s to find an exciting new social-media application. This past year might finally have broken the curse: irresistibly shareable personalized video clips from celebrities and being able to be a text chain with your favorite celebs show that there’s still room for novel ideas to go mainstream even in the face of one giant owning several major social platforms. In addition, 2019 brought both the rise of social shopping as well as the return of niche networks for communities that make far less sense being dumped into a one-size-fits-all group.
1. Cameo
For creating the “famous faces on demand” platform, where fans pay for personal videos from more than 30,000 celebrities
While it was launched in 2017, this past year marks the Chicago-based company’s pop-culture arrival. Both a utility for, and seemingly the next evolution of modern celebrity, the “famous faces on demand” service allows consumers to book celebrities to create personalized video shout-outs for anything from birthdays to good-luck wishes as well as prom invitations and marriage proposals. In 2019, the company’s employee headcount went from 18 to 135, while participating celebs skyrocketed from 3,000 to more than 20,000. Cameo also expanded internationally to the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, and raised $50 million in Series B financing.
Read more about why Cameo is one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2020.
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