The Science of Popularity

Though this smacks of the suspicious science of historiometric analysis, I of course had to see what my measure of internet fame was.

And that in turn gave me an idea: I propose that we formalize this as a measure of Internet Fame (IF): 127,000 Google hits is equal to one “brooksie.

Scott Spiegelberg = .018 brooksies
Musical Perceptions = .041 brooksies

And I'm not even that popular, because there is a Scott Spiegelberg associated with the Oregon State athletic department, and Musical Perceptions is also the name of a popular academic book edited by John Sloboda and Rita Aiello. In fact, it was staring at that book in my shelves that inspired the name of this blog. I do get first mention in the first search, (OSU Scott comes in first at #27), and I come in at #6 for the second search. In Yahoo, my blog comes up before the OUP book.

What surprises me is that this measure of popularity comes up in the first place. Why not use Blogshares instead? This includes weighting of how important the sites are that mention your specific blog, doesn't have the false positives of mistaken identity, and doesn't refer to a pundit that has been known for hackery.

Update: Jaquandar points out that Usenet activity should be measured as part of the IF equation. A search for my name on Google Groups shows another 4,720. So my combined IF measure should be .096 brooksies, almost up to a significant number!