Singapore’s Influencer culture grew out of 2000s blogshop commerce.

Evidence

Although the term Influencer only came in vogue in the mid-2010s, the practice of Influencer culture has a longer history. In Singapore, the emergence of Influencers was rooted in the “blogshop” industry from the mid-2000s, where young women were self-modeling and selling used clothing on blog platforms such as OpenDiary, LiveJournal, Blogspot, and Xanga, literally repurposing blogs into online shops. Several blogshop owner-models began “side blogs” where they would narrate their personal lives in a diary-style format, while also posting pictures of themselves in clothes they were trying to hawk on the internet. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 218

Categorization

• QUESTION: Does the blogshop-to-blogger genealogy hold in other regional markets like China or the US, or is it Singapore-specific?
• SHARE: Would interest someone following how commerce seeds intimacy-based content.
• XREF: connects to: Singapore’s Influencer economy grew out of small blogshops selling imported clothes — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 220; Singapore Influencer culture grew from mid-2000s blogshop self-modeling — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 218

Broader Connections

• Singapore’s Influencer economy grew out of small blogshops selling imported clothes #corroborates (0.95) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 220
• Singapore Influencer culture grew from mid-2000s blogshop self-modeling #corroborates (0.90) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 218