6 months ago

December 29, 2008

Etymology of a Meme

Story 1:

In Maryland, high schoolers are pulling a creative new prank: They print up copies of their target’s license plate number (using glossy paper and laser printers) and speed past anti-speeding cameras. The camera takes a picture and sends a $40 ticket to the (innocent) registrant assigned to the license plate.

Story 2:

The story, above, is a “WEB EXCLUSIVE” of The Sentinel, a Maryland publication — which before today, I had never heard of. Quantcast estimates it has roughly 521 monthly visitors.

The story was picked up by TheNewspaper.com, a journal of driving-related stuff. Again, I had never heard of it. Quantcast: 13.1K monthly visitors.

TheNewspaper’s report was hit on by GeekPress, which cited a mailing list its editor subscribes to as the source, but not The Sentinel (through no fault of GeekPress). GeekPress, which I had heard of and read occassionally, is not listed in Quantcast, but it has roughly 400 Google Reader subscribers. I am not one of them.

I, and an estimated 165,000 others, do subscribe to Marginal Revolution, which noted the story on GeekPress (but again, as is common, did not trace back to the source or the root source). Quantcast suggest that nearly 60,000 people read MR monthly, which does not mesh with the Google Reader data, but whatever.

A Google search on “montgomery county license plate scam” returns this page as a top result. (The Sentinel, itself, does not use the word “scam”.)

The page:

• Notes that “The Sentinel” brok the story
• Has three ads
• Is skeptical of The Sentinel’s report
• Does not link to The Sentinel (or to any other source)

***

Lesson 1: Even the smallest newspaper (or whatever The Sentinel is) can start a fire.

Lesson 1a: That newspaper probably won’t get credit, or enough credit. All the links should go to the root story, but it’s too hard for downstream readers/bloggers to find the right link. It took me a click from my RSS reader to GeekPress to TheNewspaper to The Sentinel, and the value add was minimal.

Lesson 1b: When links are currency — that is, when links spread “Google Juice” and therefore traffic — something is amiss.

Lesson 1c: But Google is pretty smart, after all.

Lesson 2: I clearly found the story about the prank interesting.

Lesson 2a: But I found the story about how the link spread to be much more fascinating.

6 months ago