For a couple months, I've been noticing a strange pattern to the spam I've been getting like, 'IZ IN UR INBOX, MUCH 2 BUY'. I never really cared to investigate the trend, but finally got it explained to me from Doubting Thomas. If you haven't heard about it get ready for LOLCAT I don't know if its headed for mainstream media or if it already peaked, but I sure would like to be able to compute the power of a fad and its expected duration.

Viral web trends make millions of dollars for the few who learn to capitalize (prey) on them. One of the first big hits I remember is Hot or Not, what fun to post a picture of your geeky friend and watch everyone dis them. This one was so big, it's still around, they've managed to turn it into a dating site. Who can forget Hamster Dance. The web has changed, content is added by the masses, not created by the few. Fads now start, peak, and die before a newspaper column could make it to print.

A little information about LOLCATS :

Wikipedia the first reference is on February 27th 2007. there were 13 edits in March, about 70 edits in April, now it is getting around 10 edits a day, on June 6th it had 50+ edits.

Flickr has 3200 LOLCAT and 3800 LOLCATS the first time the tag was used was March 2005. The first use of this tag with the IM IN UR line was in Novermber 2006.

Myspace LOLCATS started in early November 2006.

Technorati has about 100 posts a day now with LOLCATS.

So what do you think, has this fad peaked ? Does it have legs ? Is it time to look for the next thing or jump on this band wagon ? I do love the internet.