Passing around new ideas has gotten more complex. The proliferation of social networks, instant messaging, and texting has helped spread memes better and faster than word of mouth alone. This in turn has triggered newly formed cultural and social norms that discourage the sharing of certain types of information, such as those containing obvious, common, biased, dubious, long-winded, or overtly commercial information. Instead, we gravitate towards sharing novel, meaningful, surprising, bite-sized discoveries.

People seem to have an irresistible urge to pass these sorts of discoveries along. The signal that an idea or product has hit this sweet spot is when I see or hear it mentioned at least three times in one day (usually through different channels). I call it the 3x/1-Day rule. I'll attempt to keep this post alive with updates when ideas and products cross this threshold, at least on my radar.

Here's a couple to get us started, but post more here that you can think of with approximate "breaking" days if you have them:

April14, 2008 - Flip Video Camera (link)
May 13, 2008 - Groundswell Book/website (link)
June 26, 2008 - The Twebinar (link)