Remember the spaghetti cat? Flipping the switch on the Large Hadron Collider? Their online popularity has earned them a place in the Internet Meme Timeline, which charts pop-culture high points on the Internet since 1970. Of course, the timeline includes a marker in 1976 for “meme,” the word coined by geneticist Richard Dawkins to describe how cultural phenomena could be transmitted and inherited in a Darwinian world.
Fourteen experts, including researchers from the University of Texas, Stanford University, Microsoft and Facebook, predict the directions of social media research in 2009. This field of social analytics is about using data to better understand human behavior and preferences, particularly in online social environments. Such data has enormous potential to generate new business opportunities for onine service providers — and, if you’re an Orwell fan (as am I), to raise the spectre of Big Brother clothed in many uncomfortable shades of grey.
Over the last 12 months Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, the Australian War Memorial, Washington’s Smithsonian Institution and other cultural organisations have been contributing images to the Flickr Commons. The (US) Library of Congress has published a report on its Flickr Commons pilot project, essential reading for academic libraries and other institutions that are considering joining the program.
