On Social Viruses and MEmes

Author: Chris Heuer

18 Sep

I wish I had more time to expand upon this, but let me say it has been an interesting day watching the Chris Brogan virus spread through the Joyeur community on Twitter. Interesting of course, because he is staying with us here in San Francisco while he is at TechCrunch 40 and because I was the one who explained to him what was going on – now I just read him some of my favorites from the 150+ I saw here on Terraminds.

So the thing is, this is funny and harmless. In essence though, it is clogging up his information retrieval agents that are working on his behalf. Not a big deal as a one day thing, but it really does raise some interesting questions about the role of smart, ad-hoc groups and their ability to form and self organize. Shows the potential power that the tools provide and how ideas do behave like viruses – and how publishing with key phrases or names can infect people’s information systems like viruses too. Of course, when it is good creative content with a positive attitude, who’s gonna mind?

Bottom line, I think Kristie is extremely lucky to have such great people in her community – and I am really glad they are on our team

As promised, the funniest I saw came from

mrl Chuck Norris is just chris brogan in disguise 11 hours ago
andy_martin Chris Brogan? I saw him overthrow an African democracy for the CIA using peanut butter and an extension cord. 10 hours ago
fitzage Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is chris brogan. —Yogi Berra 10 hours ago
ewmullin Man, the guy who picked Chris Brogan in our fantasy league is killing everyone! 9 hours ago
TeddyRoosevelt if theres only one brogan and brogan walks into a room is that considered a bro-verload? 9 hours ago

Filed under: Uncategorized

7 Responses for "On Social Viruses and MEmes"

Chris Brogan... September 18th, 2007 at 3:56 am 1
Chris Brogan isn’t in your blogroll? : )
Michael Larocque (mrl) September 18th, 2007 at 10:51 am 2
Glad I could help out.
Matt Fitzsimmons (fitzage) September 18th, 2007 at 11:07 am 3
I’m honored to be among the greats. The Chuck Norris one was the best. You go, mrl.
Kristie Wells September 18th, 2007 at 11:12 am 4
My clan has published a ‘book’ of sorts – with all the chrisbrogan that came through for the day. http://urltea.com/1ijw (thanks to @joeld for starting the meme and putting the book together)

While it was entertaining to see the posts come through, it was a bit nerve wracking too, as I kept waiting for someone to turn it ugly. Not concerned so much about my clan, as Joyeurs are a clever and respectful bunch, but for those people playing that I didn’t know, especially as the meme grew. You never know where people will take it, but thankfully, everyone kept it clean.

And thanks to our buddy Brogan who was quite the gent to play along.

Summary: Communities can be a powerful thing, just happy mine is used for good.
Laura Athavale Fitton September 18th, 2007 at 11:38 am 5
Oddly, there’s a socnet “promotions” (if you’ll excuse the term) side to this coin too. Thru this game/prank, the Joyeurs showed themselves to be a funny & clever bunch. I’ve added (read: am now twitterstalking) several of you, subbed the Joyent/Joyeur blog & learned what Joyent is in the first place. This was a fun & interesting way to “meet” you. -@pistachio
Joel Dueck (joeld) September 18th, 2007 at 12:15 pm 6
haha, it was supposed to be just a funny hack / joke. Glad it worked out, kudos to the joyeurs. I think if they hadn’t all done this, they would have gotten noticed some other way. although mostly we just hide out in the forums and argue

Dean will rise again.
Silicon Valley Watcher - media + technology + innovation September 18th, 2007 at 4:13 pm 7
How to lose a Blackberry, and other stories of Monday evening . . ….

This week is so busy with conferences: Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference. TechCrunch40, Intel Developer Forum, and all in San Francisco, all within a block or two of each other. I got to stay at home Monday and wrote five posts. Why go to events tha…