I’ve set up a Google News alert to let me know whenever the term “Naked Communications” appears in the news. Usually it’s a steady trickle of quotes from Paul Woolmington, who has the uncanny ability to manage Naked business (“I love the smell of detergent in the morning!”), talk on the phone with reporters (“Research and development is the lifeblood of America!”), and give presentations at conferences (“We need to re-engineer the communications model!”) — all at the same time.

But this past week has had nothing to do with Paul. This week has been all about Julian Cole, a guy from Naked Sydney, who did some research that found a growing number of Australian youth are addicted to social networks.

Here he is, quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald:

“For many moderate to heavy users, checking their MySpace or Facebook account has become an automatic and compulsive behaviour, with some participants reporting they log on up to twenty times a day,” Mr Cole said.

He found that many openly admitted to their addiction and, in an ironic twist, contribute to online confession groups.

This is interesting stuff, sure, and none of us would likely disagree with his findings. Not around this place, anyway.  But what was interesting to me is how this research and a handful of quotes like the one above from Cole himself made the rounds in the media- and blog-world echo chambers.

The Australian picked it up. So did this blog, and this one, and this one, and this one.

From my point of view, watching the articles stream in through my Google News feed, it seemed like the entire country of Australia was talking about this one piece of research. It had legs, as they say.

And I guess we’re supposed to be blasé these days about the viral-ness of certain worthy pieces of content and the ability of technology to facilitate it all. But every now and again, I have to stop and marvel at it. Amazing. Well done, Julian Cole.