popularity
Popularity is a fickle thing. Styles, products, social movements and people can be bathing in the spotlight one day and languishing in obscurity the next. And according to a new study, things that catch on most quickly are also abandoned most easily - the faster the rise to prominence, the steeper the fall from grace.
Many researchers have looked into the reasons behind the success of cultural tastes, but Jonah Berger and Gael Le Mens were more interested in the factors that drive them to extinction. To examine that, they looked at the changing popularities of first names in France and the…
tags: Seed Media Group, ScienceBlogs, ScienceBlogs.de
I have been made privy to a special 1 July 2008 press release from Seed Media Group, the parent organization for ScienceBlogs, which hosts my blog. The news is good.
In short, Seed Media Group announced that ScienceBlogs, the internet's largest science community, has experienced a phenomenal growth in readership: total visits for the first six months of 2008 has topped 14 million, an all-time high.
ScienceBlogs was launched in mid-January 2006 after inviting 14 science blogs [including my blog, Living the Scientific Life (Scientist,…