MemeSpread
I was explaining to Ben what a meme was (something I only really learnt not long before). Meme, pronounced MEE-m, is a word derived from gene, as in biology. Basically it’s a social phenomenon that has the same properties as a virus: it replicates, mutates, and only the strong ones survive. Chaing letters are examples of such.
The Wired article How the Word Gets Around talks about a project carried out by a researcher in an attempt to track thep progression and spread of memes via blogs.
Perhaps what was interesting about the study was where the meme spread most: first it was seeded at Kottke, then it exploded even more at Metafilter. They surpmised that MetaFilter was a bigger explosion because of the larger range of audience there.
I find this ties interestingly to The Tipping Point, which I’ve been browsing through. In the book, they talk about the people that can help cause social epidemics and one of the types was the Connector. The social person who knows literally everyone and connects people across different social circles. Blogs like MeFi are doing this now, and hence reaching these connectors becomes much easier than it used to be.
OK/Cancel’s rap song was linked across many sites, including MeFi. What we found was that in our case, we didn’t want to be bridged across to other audiences becasue they just didn’t get it – nor were they meant to. What we needed to find were the social connectors specific to our industry. Thus, when Kottke linked us for something else a month or so later, that effect actually was much higher. Exactly opposite of the memeproject’s results.
