Fame and importance

I was reading an article by Alfred Thompson at the Cyberspace People Watcher blog, called "Who the famous people are following " and it go me thinking about the word fame and how its definition has changed over the years.  When I was younger, a famous person was someone like John Kennedy or Willie Mays or a movie star like John Wayne. Everyone knew who they were and what they did to become famous.   Yes, except for in rare cases you had to actually do something to be famous, you couldn't be famous just by being in the limelight (see Paris Hilton...) The other change is fame has become compartmentalized.  By this I mean that you can be famous in one area and be completely unknown is the wider world.  For example, Robert Scoble is famous among those who are part of Social Media, blogging  including microblogging.  In the rest of the world he is virtually unknown.  If I asked my family or friends who Robert Scoble was they wouldn't have any idea.  This doesn't mean he is not important or famous, he is in his small niche, just not on a global scale.   We also tend to mistake fame with importance.  Fame and importance can go together , but they don't have too   Britney Spear is famous, but let's face it she is not very important.  The group that invented Small Talk, aren't  famous (outside of  Linux's Geeks) but they are very important.   It is important not to mistake one for the other.