Interesting empirical study of rules of meme spreading from looking at weblog postings, from the excellent Microdoc News. via Doc Searls
“Rarely can an individual blogger get a story going.”
“The best blog stories are those that are branded with a word or phrase that is highly identifiable with that story.”
“The stories that get going are not usually subject specific blogs but stories that cut across all interests of the blogging community.”
“When bloggers action is not requested, most often stories get up and running for longer.”
“Perhaps the last conclusion we came to in this study is that blogs cannot be read in isolation from each other. Blog stories are understood and appreciated in aggregate and not in isolation. On the other hand, mainstream media stories tend to be read in isolation rather than read and compared. “