Gaining Fame through the Internet

It seems that today singers and songwriters have a much easier way to gain their "fifteen minutes of fame." For almost popular song on the radio there are numerous covers of it posted on YouTube by singers hopeful to gain fans and have their music or voices heard. One singer moved quickly ahead and instead of simply posting videos of himself singing on YouTube he used the recently popular website Chatroulette to display his singing skills to the world- impromptu style. Chatroulette is a website that pairs up random users to video and/or text chat with one another. Members do not know who they will be paired up with and when they are ready to chat with someone new they can connect with another user with the simple click of a button.
This man with his piano, his black hoodie and black glasses goes by the name Merton and sings impromptu songs about the person he is paired up with on Chatroulette. Many quickly became curious about "Merton" and who the man under the disguise was. Some even began to wonder if he was actually the real-life singer, Ben Folds. Merton says that the disguise allows him to be "more free and more creative."
Merton's popularity caused CNN to do a segment on him. CNN actually video chatted with Merton, who sang a song for the news station.
(the link: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2010/04/07/elam.chat.roulette.cnn?iref=allsearch)
Merton calls Chatroulette an opportunity for those interested in improvisation. Before websites like YouTube and Chatroulette were popular, people like Merton would have a much harder time become so nationally or universally known.