It's a Meme World Out There

It was 2006 and MySpace was all the rage. Susan Boston, a young mother from Massachusetts, was taking a photography class and in need of a subject.

With no one else to choose from, Susan settled on her 16-year-old son Blake. She ended up taking more than 300 photos and uploading them to MySpace, Know Your Meme reported.

This was one of them.

The photo existed in obscurity until 2011. That's when the social news site Reddit discovered it and turned Blake into the "Scumbag Steve" meme.

Since then, Blake has done all he can to capitalize on his meme's popularity, appearing at tech conferences like ROFLCON III and partnering with Pepsi Co.

Yet none of that financial success compares to the cash companies like Quickmeme have raked in using his image.

As one of the top three most submitted domains on Reddit, Quickmeme URL's have regularly been featured on its front page (which collects 70 million unique visitors a month).

This has resulted in a windfall of traffic for the small business and hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad sales.

And Blake was not happy.

Blake's gripe is one expressed by many of the Internet's most beloved meme creators and personalities. Some, like Nyan Cat creator Chris Torres, have even had to flex their legal muscle to make sure other people aren't cashing in on his creation.

And if thievery wasn't the only concern, businesses like Home Depot are hard at work making their own memes.

This panel will discuss how these people navigate this new, fast moving, business world. We will also discuss what the future holds for these Internet celebrities and whether the meme business bubble is about to burst.

Photo by secagle/Flickr