Robert Lemos in Wire News.
It was an experiment by comparative literature graduate student, Scott Eric Kaufman, to measure how quickly a simple idea would jump between blogs covering different academic disciplines. It was a scientific experiment to track the 'meme' - a quantum of cultural thought popularised by evolutionist and author Richard Dawkins.
Wired News says: "The idea that Kaufman decided to track was his blog post on the experiment itself ... The post languished on his site for a few hours and then got picked up by a colleague's blog. After that, the meme took flight in a way that surprised the literature student: Almost 50 blogs, including a number of science forums, linked back to the post in less than three days ..."
"The success of the experiment is all the more revelatory in that the meme in question is hardly new or novel ... In the end, Kaufman's experiment might prove less about how any particular meme moves through the web, and more about the attention span of the internet. Just two years after a nearly identical experiment, enough bloggers believed the experiment to be new and relevant that the meme traveled quickly and widely."
Full report: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72207-0.html?tw=rss.index
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