I’ve used search results as one metric of how an idea is spreading; I’ve used the number of delicious tags as well. These are not perfect measures, but they can be illuminating.

Good post.

Agreed. With small numbers of contributors, though, as in the examples I showed, it’s easy enough to click through and see at a glance what is human and what is robotic.

I’ve been fascinated (or horrified, pick yours) at the ability of coordinated efforts to propogate memes.

The one to watch on twitter right now is the immense number of single purpose political twitter accounts set up to post something about ACORN (and nothing else) at all hours of the day or night. They don’t follow each other, for the most part, and don’t appear to have any human attached to them directly.

I’d be very cautious of attributing all trending items to the term “meme” – you might be faced with whatever the astroturf equivalent of that term is.