One of the things that should be considered when compiling a list of "celebrities" to bring on board is how these people make their money and why they have a large following.
Reality stars like the Kardashians can make $10,000 for one post on twitter if they are promoting a brand, most of the huge actors and musicians have other people managing their social media accounts, most of these accounts are not to make money off of directly but to further promote their personal brand and current or future projects and/or merchandise. Selena Gomez gets a couple hundred thousand if she does a cross platform post. The more followers they have the more money they get paid for a post, movie, appearance or concert.
These people probably do not care about making a couple of dollars in crypto that they would have to hire someone to turn into spendable cash money. Most of the time they don't go to a social platform unless it starts picking up popularity with their fanbase first.
Greater consideration needs to go to people who make money directly on their web traffic and user engagement.
Entertainment and gossip bloggers, youtubers, influence marketers, cryptocurrency investors and bloggers, tech writers, music bloggers, authors, screenwriters, directors, etc.
Up and coming or established musicians with an large online following who would see the value in releasing new music exclusively on steemit.com or a sneak peek at their new album from time to time might work because they can make money for dropping the exclusive content through the upvotes of their fans, possibly gain new fans and drive all of that to iTunes (until the SteemStream digital music market comes out) or their website where people will purchase their music providing them an additional source of income from their music.
Perez Hilton or Worldstarhiphop.com and other bloggers could follow a similar model, the thing to remember is that most of these people make money on ad sales on their website, their social media presence is to a) strengthen their personal brand to drive traffic to their websites. b) to get paid to promote someone's product.
The big difference right now between Steemit and other social media like FB and Twitter is the latter is mostly just pictures and a short message like " OMG!!! #,CeasersPalace rooftop view is amazing! Next stop #,Starbucks. ;)" or "#GameDay".
I think I am done for now my brain is a little fried from a long weekend but to summarize my thoughts, if someone is making 10 million+ a year the time and effort they would have to put into the current Steemit system would not be worth it, for someone making a couple hundred thousand a year blogging, writing or selling digital downloads online this is a very attractive platform.
Now if @ned or @dantheman could bring in a celebrity to invest in the actual platform then the incentive for them to bring on new users changes. There are some celebs that are interested in crypto, Ashton Kutcher, Nas. Bill Gates, Richard Branson and I think Barrack Obama have made comments about crypto being the future.
Steemit is a fairly niche audience for now. Celebrities will target their on-line presence where they can reach the largest audience of the right demographic. Making a few dollars (or even thousands) here may not be enough. I saw that happen on Tsu where they signed up some celebs at the start, but they didn't stay. It's a bit of a chicken/egg problem, but Steemit can grow organically to a point where it's interesting for them.
The question, of course, is going to be will the celebrity that joins and their followers benefit the platform?
The reason steemit works is interaction. If for example, I only post and upvote my followers, and my followers only upvote me, there's no distribution across the platform.
Personally, I have no interest in what celebrities have to say or promote. I'm sure I'm a minority. But it is something to consider.
Will celebrities and their followers interact outside of their own circle? Will content that we see now be lost in the myriad of fan posts? I don't think the current structure could support it.