Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is doing his best to help me spread a meme called 'The Shocker'. I didn't start this meme. It was passed onto me by Ryan King and some other Technorati folks.

More than the individual tag memes themselves, it is the significance of memes I'm interested in. Certainly, they haven't become a world-wide phenomenon yet, but judging by the popularity around these parts, they are going to be quite viral.

Tagging, itself, is a fairly new phenomenon, kind of publicly kicked off by del.icio.us, popularized by Flickr and Technorati. Because it is not only useful, but connecting as well, tagging is starting to spread much wider. Europeans have caught on quickly - artists and geeks alike. Asians are starting to really get into tagging, too. It isn't just the U.S. geek community who are catching on.

Funny story. Overheard the otherday:

"How is your meme doing?"

"Twenty-three and counting. I had a French blogger pick it up and it seems to have legs over there."

"Cool. Go meme go."

"Yeah, just for fun, I like to start new memes and see where they go."

Funny. There was a time we went to an amusement park for fun.

But is tagging fun? Gee, it seems like kind of a tedious task to tag one's every photo or every blog entry or every digital song. But it would only be tedious if tagging was a task for oneself - a sort of organizational tool. It's like filing or alphabetizing your CD collection. A very small part of the population actually digs that sort of thing.

But tagging is not about organization (although that is a beneficial outcome of the exercise). It's about social networks.

Consider this story. I recently shot a fire hydrant as I walked down the street. I particularly liked that it was chipped and worn and I have a digital camera, so shooting everything in sight is kind of what I do. Minutes after I posted the shot, I received a message from Mr. TRONA, who actually has a photo group called The Birdsill Holly Society, which is a collection of fire hydrant shots...some really gorgeous ones, too. There are 3,026 shots of fire hydrants in this group from 636 members from all over the world. People are connecting over their love of fire hydrants. To me, that is awesome.

Unlike other social networking sites where you just list your interests, photo sites allow you to connect through visual markers. Seeing is believing, in a way. There is something incredibly addictive about it.

So, as Michael and I do our part to spread The Shocker, others are doing their part to grow and spread their own memes. Sounds like fun, eh?

Truly, don't knock it until you've tried it.

Tags: memes, tagging, tags