The 25 Things Meme Is Not News
February 12, 2009 
Author 
In I’m breaking my own rule and jumping into the echo chamber today. Don’t worry, this won’t take long.
Hate to be the one to say this, but the 25 things meme is not news. It is simply what the social web does. If national media (yes, national media – NYT, USA Today, even TIME) are going to write up note-tagging on Facebook and that is the best web culture reporting they can come up with – that’s just sad.
The Wall Street Journal blog writes:
…no one seems to be able to get to the bottom of who actually started it, or why Facebook users are suddenly so enamored with this particular means of sharing both intensely personal and highly mundane details about themselves with hundreds of friends and acquaintances in their news feeds.
Anyone want to clue the Journal in on this whole social media thing? Was it me or did they just describe about 10 popular web services that have been doing just that for years?
Continued, from the Journal:
Even more mysterious is the question of why is it that people are passing along this list so prolifically…
Really? This is so mysterious? Wow, I could have sworn people have been doing this since we could email each other.
I may be in the minority, but do you find this mundane coverage by national outlets trying to report on the absolute least interesting things in the social web uncomfortable to read?
As an aside yes, I have participated in tagging memes and have absolutely nothing against them (here’s my post on the old The 4×4 Meme). But again this isn’t news – tagging easily predates Facebook anyway.
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Tim Jahn replied | Feb 12, 2009 (59 comments)
Oh man, that quote from the WSJ is hilarious! Where have they been the past 4 or 5 years?
This just goes to show that while traditional media has come a long way into adapting to tomorrow, they’re still got a foot and a half back in yesterday.
Jakatak replied | Feb 13, 2009 (9 comments)
This is why the newspapers/magazines are going to be gone soon.
Then we will blog:
No one seems to be able to get to the bottom of who actually ended it, or why newspapers lasted so long delivering news that was as much as a day and a half old.
Heather replied | Feb 13, 2009 (1 comment)
The 25 Things was forwarded around MySpace 3 years ago… it’s definitely not news… but journalists don’t “get” MySpace… knowing html is out of their skill set so they are all gaga over Facebook… which doesn’t require any skills. :)