Jokes, despite their popularity and widespread sharing across the Internet, are not a new concept. From a very young age we learn the setup of a joke, and very quickly catch on to the pattern of joke telling: someone shares a joke, I find it funny, and days later retell the joke to a group […]
I spend a lot of time working on ReTweets, mostly because I believe them to be one of the most important developments in modern communications, extending far beyond the Twittersphere. “Ideas shape the course of history.” -John Maynard Keynes Ideas have been spreading from person to person for thousands of years; contagious ideas form the […]
I’ve done a bunch of research into the characteristics of ReTweets in an effort to understand what makes them viral. ReTweets are the first entirely observable and analyzable viral content spreading mechanism in the history of mankind and as such they offer an unparalleled window into what makes humans spread ideas. Over the past few […]