Just a complementary entry on a previous post (how does mass psychology influence blogging?). I just remembered a digg post called “Nano-mario wants his amazing RIAA photos!’ which in just one hour draw the attention of 181 visitors and 622 (visitors) in eight (hours).
It was conducted by the xedant team, which analyzed the top stories in digg to find out the most oftenly used words in digg headlines. You guessed well, some of the top words were ‘riaa’, ‘amazing’, ‘photos’, ‘nano’. More information from the xedant team itself here and here.

I think this research verifies pretty well, that the studies of mass psychology can be applied in a non-massive medium, like the social web. I’m not saying that the blogosphere consists of a passive crowd [the xedant did not get any business from the visitors - although it got popular]. I just say that a good headline can make a big difference - and learning what constitutes a good headline can be found in studies of mass psychology.

[The works of Elias Canetti: Crowds and Power, Gustave Le Bon: The Crowd; a study of the popular mind and Serge Moscovici: The age of the crowd; a historical treatise on mass psychology could be a good starting point]

And as the third rule of digg.com noted in the report of the research) says: Your story must be unique. You can generate new content by analyzing an old one, like we did. An addition to the role of new content in the blogosphere.

P.S. I don’t like linking to amazon (or any online shop) but the LibraryThing, which i usually use to link literature, was down (anyway extremely slow). corrected that. But the Moscovici book was not in its databanks, so the amazon link remains. still sorry