A.J. Marr has written an excellent essay on the notion of the meme and why he believes it to be essentially a poor metaphor for the complexities of human behavior. It is well-researched and thoughtful, but in the end, relegates the concept of the meme to the land of mixed metaphors and gives it too much credit of control over human behavior. Read more…

I found this entry from Chris Anderson over at The Long Tail regarding how he sees an explosion in market space (read: used-to-be-shelf-space) online causing a lot of trouble for brands. I don’t disagree with his conclusion that tastemakers (i.e. Oprah, Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton) will be more important or that many companies will decline in marketshare as information in the market increases and the number of competitors increases but I disagree that they all will.

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