An interactive time line tracking the internet's most-popular memes has itself become a viral hit.
The Internet Memes time line, created using web service Dipity, charts hundreds of web phenomena that have captured surfers' imaginations over the years.
Started by BK Gupta, Dipity's director of products, the time line chronicles the rise of early internet diversions like the Trojan Room coffee cam and the creepy dancing baby to more recent laugh riots like LOLcats and Paris Hilton's presidential video.
Gupta's time line (embedded above) has become the second most popular one on Dipity, which hosts approximately 75,000 different interactive charts. Dipity lets users quickly generate time lines by entering information manually or by capturing data from RSS feeds, YouTube, Flickr or
Twitter accounts. Using Dipity's tools, users have built time lines chronicling events in TV show Lost and the inception of virtual worlds.
(We created one using the Underwire RSS feed.)
The Internet Memes time line got started on a lazy afternoon in April, when Gupta picked a couple dozen of his favorite memes, like Tay Zonday's "Chocolate Rain" video and the Rickroll prank, and entered them into Dipity's generator. Shortly thereafter, users swarmed the site, adding their favorite memes, descriptions and videos to Gupta's creation. To date, the time line has been viewed nearly 800,000 times and contains more than 250 data points.
Wired.com caught up with Gupta by phone at his company's San Francisco office to chat about wiki gnomes, Dipity 2.0 and the viral nature of the Internet Memes time line.
Wired.com: Tell us how the meme time line was created.
__BK Gupta: __The internet meme time line was something I started as a fun Friday project. I just put it together with 25 or so memes that I liked.
Wired.com: What has the response been like?
Gupta: Once the community found out about it, they completely took it over and turned it into a real project. It was great to see that at a personal level, and to see the level of engagement. It's our second most-popular time line. The most-viewed time line is documenting the events (surrounding) Caylee Anthony, a missing toddler in Florida. That's got a million and a half views, most likely because it was embedded in a couple of Fox News stories, but the Internet Memes time line is driving the most traffic from Dipity.com.
Wired.com: A topic like internet memes seems like it would attract droves of detail-obsessed wiki gnomes.
Gupta: Every once in a while people will put something really specific on there -- like a YouTube video with 200,000 views, which is not necessarily an internet meme. A few people also started adding items in about the history of the internet, and the community had to step in and vote those items out.
Wired.com: How accurate are the data points?
Gupta: We leave it to the community to self-regulate. We've found what Wikipedia found, which is that accuracy is higher when left to the community, rather than when a small group of editors are checking over the project. We currently have 256 events on the time line now, but I would estimate there's probably 350 submissions total.
Wired.com: Do you have any plans for all the data you've collected?
Gupta: We've talked to a few viral marketers that are interested in a centralized collection of successful attempts at going viral, whether planned or not. They can analyze what makes something go viral or not and how it spreads through pop culture -- like when "Chocolate Rain" was covered by John Mayer.
Wired.com: What's next for Dipity?
Gupta: We're launching Dipity 2.0 at the beginning of October. It'll integrate TimeTube (the YouTube feed generator) as well as the tools for Digg, Flickr and Twitter into the same interface.
See also:
- Behind the Memes With ROFLCon's Biggest Cewebrities
- Gallery: 10 YouTube Videos Destined for the Big Screen
- ROFLCon: It's Not Easy Being Memes
- Weezer's Memetastic Video Director Spills the 'Pork and Beans'
- Behind the Memes: Kickin' It With the I Can Has Cheezburger? Kids
*Underwire 2.0: Jenna Wortham's Google Reader, FriendFeed**, Twitter; The Underwire on Twitter and *Facebook
