Memetic Lifecycles

[jducoeur]

Hypothesis: the faster a cultural phenomenon takes off and the bigger it gets, the faster it will peak and then fade into being a niche thing. Fifteen minutes of fame can, sometimes, be fifteen seconds.

I've had this theory in the back of my mind for a long time, but Pokemon Go looks like it'll make a *lovely* data point to examine...

Comments

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

A good rule of thumb, but subject to at least one major hole. Sometimes, the new thing has (effectively) permanent staying power (albeit usually less than the peak of the initial 'fad' phase). Notable examples in our lifetime include Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. They followed the initial spike and drop-off curve, but never dropped *very* low, and ended up being the foundation of permanent new genres of play. PG has a decent shot at doing so, IMO.

[jducoeur]

Yep -- we'll see. I assume PG will stick around; the interesting question is what percentage of current users stick with it. I've rarely if ever seen something hit quite this big, quite this fast -- I mean, it's been *days* since it was released and it's already one of the biggest smartphone apps in the world. That's quite remarkable, but I have no idea what percentage of those users will keep playing with it beyond next month...

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Markedly fewer of them if they don't fix the server crashes soon.

[jducoeur]

Ah -- hadn't heard about those, but I'm not surprised. Scaling up a system *that* fast is really, really hard, and I suspect they've been taken by surprise by some of the challenges...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Getting supply to meet demand (while not setting oneself or one's distribution chain up for a big bust) is traditionally one of the big problems in these cases.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

People at work are complaining that the most annoying bug is when it crashes right when you make a capture.