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 containing obvious, redundant, 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 it is mentioned at least three times in one day (usually through different channels). I call this the 3x/1-Day rule.

Here's a couple 3x/1-Day memes. I'll try to keep up - at least from my limited perspective.

April14, 2008 - Flip Video Camera (link)
May 13, 2008 - Groundswell Book/website (link)
June 26, 2008 - The Twebinar (link)
August 18, 2008 - Mangatars (link)
August 27, 2008 - Ubiquity (link)
September 3, 2008 - Google Chrome (link)
September 9, 2008 - Has the large hadron collider destroyed the world yet? (link)
September 23, 2008 - Twitter bots