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The Tipping Blog

John Hiler, Microcontent News, Mar 14, 2003
Commentary by Stephen Downes

Nice analysis of how a meme (that is, a catchy article or idea) posted in a weblog can spread like wildfire through the internet. It happens every day and it happens something like this:

An Expert (one might call her a Content Maven) Writes or Creates something interesting and puts it online (creating the critical component of any online ideavirus: the link)CRLF
A Link Maven comes across the link, and blogs it to their siteCRLF
A Connector finds the link and blogs it to their site (or the aforementioned Link Maven has Connector-like traffic levels)CRLF
The link starts to Tip within the weblog communityCRLF
The link Tips beyond the weblog community, as the rest of us find out about it."CRLF

All these terms are neatly defined in this article, with explanations. My only criticism is that this article looks only at the phenomenon of the Top 40 weblog items. But there is an enormous amount of cross-linking that never reaches this level because it doesn't have the mass appeal (just about everything about online learning, for example). It would be interesting to know not simply how mass meming happens, but why it happens. Because while I'd like to think that it is intrinsic in the idea being propogated, I know it's not.

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