So one of the tools that you have to help you manage WordPress blogs (and probably a lot of other blog engine blogs) is the ability to see what websites are linking in to your site.  Whenever I find that a site has linked to my blog I’m always curious to see who’s linking to me so I usually go check their site out.  The other day I got a really random link from a site called Polymeme.com and I think it might be one of the more interesting sites I’ve come across lately.

First let me try to explain the term meme. I’ll probably fail horribly because I’m not totally comfortable with the definition myself, but here goes. Basically, a meme is a “thing” that gets propagated through society in a viral manner. It can be anything from an idea to a theory to a behavior, but the key is that its passed from person to person, sort of like a virus.  In Internets terms, a meme is usually a video or blog article or web article that gains a great deal of popularity through people linking to it or sharing it with friends through email.

There are a number of websites out there designed to aggregate the hottest memes of the day, many of them leaning heavily in the technology direction.  Some of the more well known are Buzz and Digg.com.  I’ve messed around on Digg a little bit, but honestly I haven’t found it all that helpful in finding articles that I’m interested in reading.  What I’m finding about Polymeme is that it works hard to aggregate articles on topics that may not get as much attention on Digg or Buzz, such as economics, science, or law.

I haven’t spent a ton of time on the site yet, but I’ve already found a couple of articles that I thought were interesting.  In reading articles about Polymeme and what it was about, a common comment was that it got outside of the typical “echo chamber” of aggregators where they’re all talking about the same thing, and I think that’s one of the best aspects of the site.  I look forward to investigating it more to see what I can find.