This is an experiment


Acephalous is trying to measure the rate of propagation of links across the net. He’s asking everyone to link to his post (so this may just be shameless blog-whoring under the guise of doing science), exhort our readers to do likewise, and he’s going to be monitoring its movement through Technorati, and will report the results at the MLA meetings.

So you heard me. Get on your blog, link to http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html, and let’s see how quickly we can saturate the blogosphere.

(via Bitch Ph.D)

Comments

  1. G. Tingey says

    What happens if you don’t HAVE a blog, but want to forward/generate/reproduce/spread the message?

    Errrr …. ?

  2. says

    Umm… Now I obviously don’t know much about this kind of research, so I may be wrong here, but won’t telling us that this is a ‘speriment and asking us to not only link from our blogs but also do things some of us would never think to do (ping technocrati? what?) skew the results something fierce?

  3. says

    I went ahead and created a blog. It’s called The Lay Atheist (I hope it’s not already taken).

    I hope this will now result with me getting many years of good luck.

  4. Nance Confer says

    Ummm. . . doesn’t the part where he begs us to link to him argue against the natural spread of his “meme?” How science-y is that? Or is he measuring how well begging works?

    Nance

    P.S. Or maybe it’s just me. We homeschool and college students are always postings posts begging for hsers to participate in their surveys. . . as if that would achieve any sort of accurate view of hsing. . . but they don’t have any way of getting “real” information short of spending a lot of time with a lot of hsers so they gin up an online survey. . .

  5. says

    I’m at school right now, so I can’t conveniently link till I get back home. Then I’ll participate in the great experiment.

    Will there be prizes?

  6. says

    Ummm. . . doesn’t the part where he begs us to link to him argue against the natural spread of his “meme?” How science-y is that? Or is he measuring how well begging works?

    You’re right about this not being a controlled experiment. I’ve written some stuff (linked to in my original post as “DISADVENTURE” and “My Morning”) which did make the rounds naturally, but the problem is my presentation’s in three weeks but the Muse doesn’t work on my schedule. I had this idea a few months back and thought inspiration would’ve struck by now, but it hasn’t. So, you know, desperation took hold.

    That said, so far the data’s been very interesting and counter-intuitive. I think there’s a damn good chance I was completely wrong in my original post…which speaks poorly of me as a thinker, but, I hope, well of me as researcher.

  7. says

    I always do as my Squid Overlord instructs me. However, please somebody tell Acephalous that unfortunately today his link is competing with the “What’s Your Seduction Style” meme, which is very popular as it has a lot of hot pink graphics ‘n stuff.