Branded: Sex and The Ivy's Lena Chen is the Model of a Web 2.0 Journalist

In a marketplace of ideas, individuals have become brands and there is no better place to sell yourself than the Internet.

What we buy, eat and read has been commodified to the point where we are told it sends a message about who we are as people. Everytime I use my computer in public, I broadcast the message, “I’m a Mac.”  Apple computers are more expensive, but they are sleek, sexy and powerful, just like their owners. Rowr. On a serious note, however,  with Internet publishing tools, we are in control of the message, both online and offline, as never before.

Harvard college senior, Lena Chen, is the first to admit she is “famous on the Internet for all the wrong things,” but in the new media landscape of the 21st century, she is the perfect case study of how to use technology to build yourself into a brand. When it comes to writing about sex at college, there is no stronger brand on the market.

The 20-year-old sociology major’s tell-all blog, Sex And The Ivy, where she has shares musings on dating and sex--or the lack thereof--at one of America’s premier colleges, has propelled her to a sort of Internet infamy, and no shortage of scandalouss accusations, but it has also spawned imitators and opened the door for Chen to freelance her work for Hustler , MTV, The Boston Globe and others.

Chen, who has been cited as an expert on college sexuality in magazines such as Salon,  Newsweek and The New York Times, is living proof that for today’s writers, who you are counts for much more than whom you write for. As a writer you must be an entrepreneur and your brand is your product.

With a simple, elegant blogging platform designed by Darjan Panic,  and her Tumblr page, Ch!cktionary, Chen has successfully launched a brand for herself, albeit that of a "bleeding heart nympho," according to SATI.

At the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV said we’re in a “gold rush of branding.” In the past companies needed tons of paid media to become a brand,  but now Vaynerchuk said, “if you get talked about enough on social webs, you can build your brand.”

A quick keyword search is enough to unearth a trove of salacious SATI-related sensationalism, some which may have generated by Chen herself. On Ch!cktionary, Chen claims she can do damage control. However, in an age of bloggers as brands, no advertisement can generate the kind of publicity generated by a well-timed photo “leak.”

Bostonist said of Chen, “Sex lives are like pets: infinitely more interesting to their owners than to anyone else.” Chen deserves kudos for exploding a taboo, but the trouble but with writing about sex often isn’t the sex at all. Having written a relationship column last year, I know this all too well.

Reading about other people's experience of sex may titillate in the moment, but the emotional component has the potential to resonate long after the thrill has passed.  While Chen's posts often grapple with topics such s bulimia and depression, Chen's most notable work is also her most shocking. She once wrote, "he fucked me so hard my jewelry came off."

In the long term, the thrill and attention garnered by Chen’s unapologetic sexual appetite and subsequent blogging may mark her with a scarlet letter. As Vaynerchuck said, part of building a brand involves creating a legacy that even your great grandchildren will see someday.

Chen declined a request for comment about  about her plans for the future. However, in a June 10, 2008 blog post she wrote,  "A book deal? A reality TV show? A job at some “edgy” new media company too self-congratulatory to actually be edgy? None of these options — and all of them have been offered — are terribly interesting to me, perhaps because they require that I sacrifice my independence and creative control. "

For all the celebrity her blogging has garnered, it seems Chen would like her life to go back to normal somehow. In the same June 10 post she wrote, “What I’d really like to do is to graduate and to become a nomad, to read what I want to read and to write what I want to write, and (most of all) to just be left alone, at least as far as my personal life is concerned.”

As a brand, Chen has established herself as sexually-liberated and unafraid to share. Exactly where that fits in the marketplace of ideas is yet to be determined, but her willingness to be fully transparent  may yet pay dividends if her literary acumen ever catches up with her libido.

UPDATE: Chen emailed to say, "I'm actually not in school this year and won't be graduating until 2010."