{{Refimprove, date=June 2007
A memetracker is a tool for studying the migration of memes across a group of people. The term is typically used to describe
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...
s that either:
#analyze
blog
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
posts to determine what web pages are being discussed or cited most often on the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
, or
#allow users to vote for links to web pages that they find of interest.
Sites in the latter group are often referred to as
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social me ...
sites.
Sample systems
The original publicly viewable memetracker was Blogdex, which is now defunct. However, many sites inspired by it exist today, such as:
*
Digg.com
Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral phenomenon, viral Internet issu ...
(a popular social media site)
*
Slashdot
''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and eval ...
*
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
*
Technorati
Technorati was a search engine and a publisher advertising platform that served as an advertising solution for the thousands of websites in its network. Technorati launched its ad network in 2008, and at one time was one of the largest ad network ...
* Techmeme
* Polymeme
* Wikio
Memetrackers are frequently characterized by purely automatic operation in determining the most popular links, though many modern sites incorporate some level of human editorial control in an effort to combat
spam
Spam may refer to:
* Spam (food), a canned pork meat product
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ...
links and other efforts to exploit the services commercially.
The introduction of memetrackers was instrumental in the rise of blogs as a serious competitor to traditional printed
news media
The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public. These include news agencies, print media (newspapers, news magazines), broadcast news (radio and television), and ...
. Through automating (or reducing to one click) the effort to spread ideas through
word of mouth
Word of mouth, or ''viva voce'', is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one pe ...
, it became possible for casual blog readers to focus on the best of the
blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...
rather than having to scan numerous individual blogs. The steady and frequent appearance of citations of or votes for the work of certain popular bloggers also helped create the so-called "A List" of bloggers.
See also
*
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...
*
Viral marketing
Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...
Drupal
Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwid ...