What is a meme and how can it become a business model? Liz Hagelthorn is one of the world's leading experts when it comes to viral social media growth and the monetization of memes. But she also has a long - and personal - relationship with social media in general, and in this episode we travel all the way from Myspace to TikTok to try and conclude what makes us react and engage online. Heja Framtiden met her at Gather Conference 2022 in Fållan at the meat packing district of Stockholm. // Podcast host: Christian von Essen // Check out our other English episodes at hejaframtiden.se
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Official bio: Liz Hagelthorn is a social-first storyteller and meme-maker with a diverse background in meme culture, technology, and organic virality. Liz is best known for leading creative for the largest pseudonymous meme network on Instagram, overseeing creative strategy across 127 accounts with 300M followers and reaching 1.2B people per month. Most notably, Liz was the face and creator behind the @girl account. She led the network’s acquisition in under two years.
Liz has held positions at Google and Twitter, and works with high-profile startups and celebrities to develop viral organic growth strategies.
Liz graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley. Follow her on Twitter @lizhagelthorn or listen to her podcast “Girl Gone Viral” at girlgoneviral.xyz. She recently wrote a piece about ownership on the internet, you can read it here.