They say the "Googlewash" is one of those with a trackable start, development, and clear conclusion--but Soc SEarls has been blogging on it all week, and my post on the subject from two days ago has tripled my traffic, so I don't think the story is very over yet. I think they're overlooking the "clumpiness" of the blogosphere, the way that different "cliques" access data differently and at different rates. Also, I think they should plot these arcs against the kinds of writing that makes them up--which is admittedly a harder proposition, but they seem up to it. I would bet that any given story is structured in "spurts": a big, thoughtful, incisinve post to start, with a few regulars picking it up and adding a lot to it, then a lot of "look at this" posts, then a well-thought-out rebuttal or challenge or new take, a period of development, a period of "lookie heres", and so on, with the occasional synthesis to bring several ideas together in a new form and start a new round.