It’s all quiet at NTV HQ this week as Liz abandoned me for much greener (and hipper) pastures in Austin at the SXSW Interactive festival. And though I couldn’t be there in person, I’ve enjoyed reading the coverage of events (like Stacey’s take on Mark Zuckeberg’s keynote conversation). One discussion that I’m bummed I missed was the I’m Internet Famous: Status in Social Media.

It was a conversation amongst podcasters, bloggers, and other Internet luminaries about how to define Web celebrity. Is it page views? Followers? Influence? It got me thinking about web video celebrity, and I figured “who needs SXSW?” — you and I can start our own conversation. When should someone be considered a web video celeb?

Classifying web celebrity is a little like defining a web video hit — there are no standards or official measurements. There is no Q rating for the Internet set. We took a stab during our NewTeeVee Live show last year when we gathered a few web vid celebs for a Family Feud-style game. But would you still consider all of them “Internet famous” today?

A good starting point is page counts. That at least provides a sense of the universe of people who visit you on a regular basis. But in an era when people blog hop the headlines as part of the morning routine, that doesn’t necessarily mean they care, you could just be visited out of habit.

Obviously you’d need to include video play counts. How many people are watching what you create? And more importantly — do they stick around for the whole video?

Repeat viewership would have to be taken into consideration. Anyone can get the one-time spike in traffic (like that nobody, Will Ferrell), but can you keep people coming back? That could be something like the number of Twitter followers you have — but that stat seems too gimmicky. There would have to be a more specific metric combining the number of subscribers you have with the number of repeat viewings.

Last, and probably most important — and most easily analogous to offline celebrity — can you move product? If you recommend something, does it move the needle for that item? Tom Hanks is A-list because he can put tushies in theater seats. Does your video review drive downloads or purchases?

I don’t have a mathematical formula to solve this, but would be interested to see what you have to say. What criteria should be used before we can call someone “Internet famous?”