This article discusses the ethics of link baiting, defined here as "great content with an angle that prompts links and social media action." The term itself has a negative connotation due to its connection with bait as a way to trick people, although it has been around too long to change. Included are various quotes from media marketing firms for or against the term and offering alternative terms. Some of these terms include 'viral copyrighting,' 'magnetic content creation,' 'branding wankers,' and 'social media marketing.' The argument here is over what sounds most benign. Although the idea is to use such content for advertising purposes, the dispute is whether the nature of that advertising is to trick people or just expose them to something new. In any case, the article says that the future of advertising on the internet is link baiting, whether or not it goes by that name.

This article offers a generally negative view on the term 'link baiting' while seemingly supporting its underlying purpose. The author Brian Clark is an internet marketer, so it makes sense for him to support it, otherwise he would be in the wrong business. What the article mentions but doesn't explore in great enough detail is that such advertising is the future. Internet memes will be created deliberately through viral marketing and sent out to compete with less self-conscious creations. This has far-reaching implications that are not the subject of the article.

This article is a response to other blog posts decrying the term 'link baiting.' Link baiting refers to the practice of creating content or a series that promotes linking.  The result of such linking is popularity, spreading an idea or creation (such as an internet meme), or simply attention.  Opponents to link baiting would say that it is an unethical practice because it involves deceiving people or questionable attention-grabbing.  However, this article argues, that isn't what link baiting is, and real link baiting offers something to the viewer, whether it is information, entertainment, or food for thought.  Furthermore, link baiting is a necessary form of promotion that anyone who wants create an idea for people to consume must do.

This article seems to be a little juvenile in the way it seems to be defending link baiting for the sake of the author's ego (so he says). While there's not much to it, the concept of link baiting is central to spreading a meme. Even for something that on its own merit encourages people to link to it (something that the article does mention), link baiting is perhaps the starting point. Whether that starting point is telling one person who will spread it to enough people or enough people that someone will spread it is a different issue.

This article talks about 'bemes'--memes spread through blogs--as being the new way that information is spread and propogated.  The author considers the definition of meme to be a piece of cultural information that spreads by word of mouth and eventually becomes common knowledge. By taking advantage of the network effect, particularly the link-heavy nature of blogs, a meme can become widespread in very short period of time. Bemes are essentially memes, but faster.  Bemes are engineered to use new media to the greatest extent and be as catchy as possible.  Also mentioned are 'bemerz', the people who create bemes. Due to the popularity of these bemes, the bemerz themselves become cultural icons. The end result is that people can create and spread ideas deliberately and quickly.

 The idea of beme doesn't really seem any different than an internet meme, although the spread of the term after being mentioned on ABC News may very well validate the argument. The point of the article is very clear, although with respect to examples it seems sparse.  The comments on the blog post serve to fill in the gaps as well as challenge the idea. As one reader says, "Nice try, though, trying to make up your own beme by creating the word itself."

Heylighen begins his examination of memes by comparing them with genetics.  Genetics is generally an apt metaphor for memetics. Memes are more or less "copied" from one person to another, sometimes varying from the original. Different memes are more or less consistent, infective, or different from majority or prior notions. However, there are key differences. Memes can be transmitted between any two people, rather than parent-to-child.  Memes also replicate much more quickly, and thus can spread throughout a network almost instantly.

The next part of the article deals with meme replication on the internet. The key parts of such information transmission are the internet's high copy-fidelity (digitization allows for lossless transfer), high fecundity (computers can produce a large volume of copies quickly), and greater longevity (digital information can be stored indefinitely). Consequently, the internet allows greater and more efficient replication of memes.  Real-world boundaries are also pushed aside, allowing diffusion to occur from multiple sources and geographical locations outward rather than from a single source outward and potentially limited by physical and linguistic boundaries. Due to the nature of the internet, permanently copying information is not always necessary, but rather linking to information (with the assumption that it will always exist at that location) is more efficient. This suggests that the number of incoming links to something on the web is important for measuring its spread.

The article also discusses how memes can compete with each other or work together, similar to genes. When memes compete, the idea is that the more popular one will win out.  As it pertains to the web, the more linked site will draw more new viewers who will then also link it, making it even more popular.  For a global network, this means that there would likely be a shared ideology eventually.

This article effectively links the nature of memes and genes. It has detailed information on the properties of memes and how they apply to what gets spread across the internet. What this article is lacking is in examples that support the emergence of a global brain. The theory behind it is well-explained, but the external factors that make things more popular or less popular among certain subsets of society are not mentioned.