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Tracking the All Your Base Meme with Usenet

Posted Apr 29, 2002

It turns out that Google's Usenet archive is pretty useful for tracking the lifecycles of Internet fads.

August 25, 2004: At Nelson's request, the data has been updated to July 2004.

2000:
Aug: 0
Sep: 1
Oct: 0
Nov: 8
Dec: 26

2001:
Jan: 267
Feb: 3160
Mar: 7070
Apr: 3880
May: 2950
Jun: 2210
July: 1870
Aug: 1520
Sep: 1360
Oct: 1460
Nov: 1040
Dec: 1010

2002:
Jan: 964
Feb: 743
Mar: 990
Apr: 845
May: 599
Jun: 389
July: 585
Aug: 452
Sep: 422
Oct: 352
Nov: 270
Dec: 293

2003:
Jan: 249
Feb: 553
Mar: 367
Apr: 417
May: 165
Jun: 1390
July: 654
Aug: 706
Sep: 358
Oct: 221
Nov: 187
Dec: 169

2004:
Jan: 188
Feb: 223
Mar: 430
Apr: 298
May: 136
Jun: 110
July: 271

4 Comments (Add Yours)

Apr 30, 2002
9:01 AM

Phil wrote:

I was going to say that you could probably do something similar with daypop, although usenet is probably a slightly wider sample of net users as a whole. really, if you combined google groups, daypop, and were able to mine through hotmail, aol, and yahoo email traffic, you could probably track trends like this pretty exactly.

Apr 30, 2002
10:12 AM

Andy Baio wrote:

The problem with Daypop is that it's not currently possible to track trends through time, since they don't list the date that a site was first mentioned on a weblog; only the date that the site was last cached.

Blogdex doesn't have that problem, though.

Apr 30, 2002
11:25 AM

Andre Torrez wrote:

HSX.com for memes?

Apr 30, 2002
11:34 AM

Andy Baio wrote:

Hmm, not a bad idea. It'd be easy to track memes with a combination of Google/Usenet/Daypop, if you could narrow the meme to a single key phrase (e.g. "all your base") or a URL (e.g. http://www.hamsterdance.com/).

I'll be sure to start work on that in my copious free time.

Waxy Links

May 15, 2012

Ignore Hitler — Draw Something spawns a meme; I like the meta one (via)

Austin Seraphin on learning echolocation — he's a real-life Daredevil

Mat Honan's feature on Yahoo's mismanagement of Flickr — a depressing read, especially while seeing the team release great new features

May 14, 2012

Make interviews Bunnie Huang on the end of Chumby — sad end to a promising product, I received one of the prototypes at Foo Camp in 2006

Rebecca Sugar's Singles — file under: scenarios I'd like to play in a videogame

SMBC on hell — sounds about right

GameBoy Color emulator in JS — the source is on Github (via)

60,000 Dominoes — 65 hours over eight days; the blooper reel was hypnotic (via)

OAuth Is Your Future — Dan Hon snaps some screenshots from the near future

May 13, 2012

Fracuum — winner of Ludum Dare 23; every winner is worth playing

May 11, 2012

Welcome to Life — "the Singularity, ruined by lawyers" (via)

BusinessWeek on the post-Kickstarter life of Diaspora — the founders talk about the Ilya's tragic suicide for the first time

Anachronism detection in Mad Men episodes — language studies from the person who did the frequency analysis for Downtown Abbey (via)

Verge feature on Scamworld, the inside look at Internet scams — incredibly deep investigation and short film, brilliantly made (via)

Hartverdrahtet — amazing 4k intro from the PC demoscene (via)

Mike Birbiglia's short film from This American Life — starring Fresh Air's Terry Gross

Chris Poole's talk on the shifting meme landscape at ROFLCon — the shift away from interest-based web communities towards social networks

Robot butt that represents emotions — I'm hoping someone turns this into a drone

May 10, 2012

Gina Trapani on the failings of "brogrammer" culture — holy hell, the comments are awful

Dustin Curtis on pixel fitting rasterized vector images — best explanation of a long-standing issue I've seen

Mitt Romney bullied gay students in high school — people change, just so long as he takes ownership of his actions; oh, wait

Walt Disney's Taxi Driver — the scene starting at 3:45 is like a parallel universe remake of Roger Rabbit (via)

Ben Jackson on memes, the Internet, and the divine — "The memes we choose to elevate to Internet fame are the product of the purest form of democracy ever invented"

May 9, 2012

Recursive Drawing — watch the video or it won't make any sense

The Forger — for fans of Kutiman's ThruYOU, found footage beat mashups from Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers

May 8, 2012

Steve Albini AMA on Reddit — "There won't ever be a mass-market record industry again, and that's fine with me"

Maurice Sendak, rest in peace — goodnight, Max

May 7, 2012

Tinkercad — amazing WebGL CAD designer that prints to Makerbot, Shapeways, and Ponoko

Mechanizing a miniature Main Street Electrical Parade — wonderful attention to detail; watch the finished parade (via)

LA Times on American Airlines' attempt to revoke its all-you-can-fly passes — the company regretted its short-sighted decision to offer lifetime first-class travel (via)

Tracking the All Your Base Meme with Usenet

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