How Celebrity is Celebrity?

What actually makes a celebrity a celebrity? How do you measure popularity, in the age of the Internet?
What really makes a celebrity a true celebrity? Is it the news coverage? The pursuit of tabloids? Perhaps sheer popularity is what drives us to call movie stars, musicians, and politicians celebrities. If that is the case, are the non-traditional stars celebrities as well?

In order to find a satisfactory answer to this dilemma, one must look for a celebrity index. CelebrityContest.net has developed an algorithm to assign a value to a celebrity, much as stocks are assigned a monetary value in order for site visitors or members to build celebrity portfolio. The algorithm takes into consideration the amount and timing of news items pertaining to celebrities as well as the popularity of the celebrity as a portion of online portfolios. But does this adequately measure the amount of celebrity status an individual has achieved?