Heard the author interviewed on the 1/12/09 Planet Money podcast re: peer-to-peer lending.

This reviewer has noticed a tendency for books about the second-generation internet to veer towards “everything about it is great” or “everything about it is terrible”, with most falling into the first category. The excluded middle is much less popular; perhaps less profitable. She looks forward to “Net 2.0—Just One of Those Things, y’know”.

On the cover at least, Clay Shirky’s book appears to attempt to be not completely about various uses of the internet, but more abstractly about social revolution, the future of involvement, and group action truly becoming a reality. First, this is overdone, and second, it is really about things people have done with computers or mobile phones all connected together. An updated new chapter (for a work first published in 2008) is even required to be appended which partly relates new apps that have taken off since the book was begun not long before. The other thing about the epilogue is that it is there where the author takes the story about a collective action revolution careening off the tracks.

The opening story—an entertaining one about serendipitous online organisation of a surprisingly large pocket of interest to locate a lost/stolen phone, and thus right an injustice—rather shows this up straight away, if only the author would admit it sooner. The truth that “a few years ago [Evan Guttman] wouldn’t have been able to get the story heard” leaves out an obvious addition: “. . . and the next time it happened, nobody was interested any more”. This is—of course—a good thing, given a moment’s thought about how a world with trigger-happy instant flash mobs, viral web campaigns, and explosive cascades of unverifiable 2.0 content presumed to be true would feel like to live in. This reviewer thinks there would be a lot more caution in tweeting, blogging, wiki-ing and everything else. Anonymity, privacy, and apathy towards the overwhelmingly totally uninteresting, likely go hand in glove.

Nonetheless there are some useful learning points explored. Dredging up Coase’s theorem is one of those. Firms, Coase said, spontaneously organise themselves in order to lower transaction costs—because the costs of organisation are lower than the savings made taking certain bargains off the market and internalising them. But “distributed participation” (one phrase used for web2.0-ification) takes an axe to the formerly non-trivial market costs. This results in a host of transactions which were below the Coasean floor (not worth firms doing) becoming feasible outside them (thus avoiding the costs of organising formally as well). This explanation seems to lie at the heart of most successes of the open-source ilk, and of the organisation of mass assemblies via twitter and other techniques. Birthday paradox maths (the naturally occurring structure of human networks, with most people knowing a few others, and some knowing hundreds—such that long distance connections can be made readily and severed only with difficulty) is invoked to help these spontaneous sub-Coasean deals to proliferate. This is real enough and grounded well enough in first principles, that the effects are worth knowing about.

What Shirky seems to pretty much miss is the other, equally first-principles-based, opposing force to group action, this being the incentive to free-ride (AKA not bother) unless any individual can extract more utility for herself than the effort she puts in. And yet this is staring the reader in the face when she gets to the part about the failure of the White Bicycle program tried in Amsterdam, just as it is in chapter one regarding Evan Guttman’s personal (mostly non-market) motivation to bring the captor of the missing Sidekick to account. This reviewer suspects that in only a tiny minority of cases is there enough individual will to put collective action into the happy sweet spot of not requiring equitable cost-sharing. Power laws—which are another handy outreach to well-worn theory—kind of point to this being true, via reasoning she won't go into here. But the jump from the power (as it were) of power-law distributions, to the conclusion that incidence of them circumventing collective action problems is very rare, is not made, Of course, if the web2.0 tide has swept enough of the Coasean floor away, then that can still be a whole bunch of stuff, and the manifestations of success (linux, various wikis, and other stories) are worth a celebration or two. But revolution? That may be an acquired taste..

Francesca ( )

It's always hard to say whether books about cutting-edge technology or social changes will age well and this book is no different. However, I have often found Clay Shirky's observations about internet culture to be clear, incisive, and free of the hype that often surrounds new technology. This book continues in that vein, with insightful and thought-provoking observations on social collaboration: what's new, what's not, what works and what doesn't. ( )

It isn't very often I get a book for a termpaper and end up keeping it after the paper is done so I can read the other chapters. Most of the ideas really were not new, but he uses very good examples to make his points and there is some really interesting little bits of computer and social networking history in here. ( )

Interesting book. A bit dry, a bit like someone's masters thesis rejigged into a book, but with enough engageing ideas to make it worth the slog. An overview on how the internet is changing fundamental ways in which certain businesses and all organizations work. Lots of comments on how once the cost of something goes down (eg publishing) it opens up to everyone. Before because the costs were so high, we chose experts to weed out before stuff was published, now because the cost is minimal, we print first and then let the readers winnow things down. Lots of good ideas on how difficult it was to pass on info, now it's just a click, and how groups used to require quite a bit of energy to form, and now it's email chains. The world as we know it is changing... ( )

Dynamics of community in web. Web lowers the bar for collaboration. The rationale for organization and the heft it requires to direct resources has shifted, at least when it comes to coordinating efforts. Power curve. Miniscule portion of users creates most of the content but that's OK.

Dramatic changes in communication tools: 1) printing press and moveable type; 2) telephone and telegraph; 3) recorded content (music, then movies); 3) harnessing of radio signals (for broadcast of radio, then TV); 4) now, many-to-many, mass amateurization communication of Internet.

Interesting story on Nupedia, predecessor to wikipedia. Key to wikipedia's success was making it easy to contribute.

Chapter 11 is important and practical. Promise, Tools, Bargain.

Promise creates the desire to participate. (Would be the purpose/mission in ALA Connect. Needs balance. Like the Linus Torvald Linux example, neither too provisional or too sweeping

Tools influence the kind of interaction, but culture of group is also influences. Wiki, email, mailing list, all different.

Bargain. Most complex, comes last. Need promise for Rules of interaction, what's in it for users. What you can expect from others, what others can expect from you. For example, users are less likely to contribute when a corporation profits (of if that's the solely perceived benefit) LA Times hosted editorial wiki is an example.

Duncan Watts and Steve Strogatz research on "Small World network." Small groups are densely connected. Large groups are sparsely connected (can't scale at everyone to everyone). To scale you connect small groups. Requires a small number of highly connected people, as in Malcom Gladwell's "connectors."

This is a great book detailing thoughts on why social networks work, how community and professions are being redefined in the web 2.0 age, and what all this means for our society. I've never read anything by Shirky, but his ability to provide real world examples using products and sites we're all familiar with makes the sociology content in the book easy to understand, digest, and apply to my own experiences. A must read for anyone interested understanding the social web environment.

This is a great book if you're looking for an overview of the global social movement that is giving rise to social media tools and practices that now surround us. Makes it clear that social media is not a fad and really is not about the technologies, it's a political movement in that it's about people coming to a new understanding of how we want to live. ( )

just reread this and liked it even more the second time around. ( )

Reveals a quite basic truth brilliantly: that the web is about people. And we're only just realising it.

Clay Shirky is one of the most original thinkers that we have today. One oh his very influential earlier writings is an essay titled ‘Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality’ and it is available here : http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerl...

In this books, he provides sharp and clear insights about how technology is changing the way groups interact with each other. Along the way he uses the examples of Wikipedia, Meetup.com, Twitter etc and provides fresh analysis of what social tools are all about and how they affect the way we live our lives. ( )

Great book on how social networking is being used to get people together for a common cause. ( )

Clay Shirky provides a fascinating, compelling and clear picture of the history of social networking as it has grown from the days of e-mail to the advent of Twitter. (He admits that it is impossible for his book to be current--several of the tools he discusses came into being as he was writing it.)

Most importantly, Shirky uses concrete examples to explain the purposes, uses, and usefulness of social networking tools such as discussion groups, photo sharing services, MySpace and Facebook, blogs, and so on.

Those born after 1980 might view this book as an interesting history. For those of us born before the 80's it is essential reading as we struggle to unlearn the lessons of our pre-Internet lives and to catch up with the modern generation as they hurry into the future.

I can't get the rating stars to go beyond five, but I would give this book a seven. ( )

An outstanding work exploring how the web and associated software has completely changed the way that information is distributed and groups are formed. This is a must read for anyone who is studies social aspects of how we live, communicate and get along.

There are some really serious ideas that should be understood by anyone who has anything to do with today's media. ( )

A fascinating insight into the changes in communication, social behaviours and technology in our world. Easy to read, relevant to the everyday person and thought provoking, it's well worth giving a try. ( )

A pragmatic and really global vision of the epocal changes that social tools allow to all of us. From Bielorussia to Italy, from US to Egypt, Shirky gives us real example of the power of many, that share low cost bidirectional tools of communicating. For italian reader: Consiglio la recensione di bernardo parrella http://bernyblog.wordpress.com/2008/0... ( )

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, carries Weinberger’s argument further into the social realm. We have this amazing new technology at our fingertips. Now what? Shirky shows how people are collaborating and harnessing its power. The ease of online publishing combined with the power of social networking creates possibilities previously unimagined. A participant on the social web can connect to others with common interests and make things happen — sometimes very quickly. Or instantly! Like Weinberger, Shirky fills his book with examples pulled from real life. His first example — that of woman who left her cell phone in a New York cab — is a fascinating tale involving hundreds of strangers reacting and mobilizing. It’s a precursor to other examples in the book. Shirky’s message is that collaboration is a powerful tool, that it has become much easier to tap into, and that it should not — cannot – be ignored any longer. If someone has a purpose (or a message, or a complaint, or an idea), and he or she publishes it, other people will likely identify with it and join in. Here comes everybody.

[More of my reviews are available at http://mostlynf.wordpress.com ]

I wanted to read this book because I am involved in a professional development year-long program of working to understand and integrate "21st century learning" into my own life and then into my teaching. I asked Mrs. Morgan what one book she would have me read if I could read only one book, and she recommended this one.

Clay Shirky focuses on the power of the interactive web to bring communities together that never would have formed before. He goes into economic theory about why groups do and do not form, and he makes these ideas very accessible. He then shows how the world has changed and what happens to groups who do not understand this. It is this tension that lies at the heart of his book and at the heart of our changing society -- that is, as the world changes, what happens to those who do not understand or choose to dismiss these changes? I wil let you read the book to learn the answer!

This fits into our theme because it helped me to understand the world I am living in and how I can play a role in it. A kind of very current search for self. Shirky is asking everyone, from individuals to global corporations, to examine their own understandings of the world via the web and to adjust those to what he sees happening.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It is not a novel, so don't expect a story. But I learned a great deal, and I always enjoy that. ( )

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008) by Clay Shirky is yet another book about the effect of social networking on the internet. And a pretty good one at that, kind of like Groundswell without the business management emphasis. Shirky's main point is not so much that new technologies are changing the world, but that they are allowing people to collaborate in ways that weren't possible before so that they can change societal and cultural norms (and by extension the world). It's a good and highly-readable summary of what's going on in the world today. ( )

Here Comes Everybody would have made a marvelous essay, synthesizing research from a variety of fields to describe how social networking has changed and is changing life and society. As a book, it's bloated and uninteresting. Shirky seems to have taken the modern adage that people won't read anything longer than a short blog post and assumed that the problem was writing that's dense and not self-referential enough. He uses the lecture- and speech-writer's tool of constantly referring back to points and examples, which makes a reader feel as if she's reading the same text over and over again. The writing was so dumbed-down that I found myself unable to read more than a few pages without my mind trying to find other things to occupy itself (speaking of Flickr.. I wonder whether I should re-tag all my vacation photos...). ( )

I was looking forward to reading this book, as I generally find Clay Shirky's ideas very relevant and compelling; I wasn't disappointed. The many different examples he offers of collaboration, and in in many different contexts, definitely got me thinking about the future of many of the organizations I'm involved in.

If anything, that is where the book left me somewhat wanting. While he deals very well with the effects of social collaboration, I am very interested in what this might look like in specific types of organizations. The most obvious example, for me, what he treatment of Organized Labour. He mentions, almost in passing, that this type of collaboration could change how Labour would organize and mobilize, but he never explores it in detail. Perhaps this was intentional (I am a pretty small audience to sell a book to).

I'll have to read this one again with that in mind, but I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in what the future of organizations might look like. ( )

This book went much deeper into the topic of social networking than I expected. He takes the concepts beyond the web, demonstrating how some principles that influence use of the web related to human societies in general, such as "small world networks". He also analyzes why many social networking web sites fail, which is good to read if you are considering starting your own site. However, I found the later chapters less compelling because he kept reusing the same examples he introduced in earlier chapters, so I felt like I was re-reading the same information. ( )

A very readable survey of social networks such as Wikipedia and why collaboration on this sort of scale will have significant effects on business, culture and science.

As well as a number of clear examples of these networks and their power, Shirkey also gives some plausible theories as to when they work and when they do not. In particular, he argues that for a social network to be successful it requires a "promise" - an articulation of what the network will do; the right "tools" - simple, easy to use services that don't get in the user's way; and a "bargain" - a statement of what each user will get in return for their participation.

All in all, this is one of those books that sums up a lot of current thinking about social networks without necessarily offering a blazing new insight. This isn't meant as a criticism though since Shirkey writes very well and has obviously put a large effort into synthesising and lucidly presenting the central ideas in this area. ( )

After reading this book I had the following thought. If you view yourself socially it takes the edge off your ego. You may not be the 'best' in your field but your contribution is enough. Just a nice thought to share. ( )

Great read about the impact of social media in society. He illustrates his case very well with real world examples and everyday stuff that is going on. I didn't find it very deep or thought provoking but a very realistic well written overview. It is a must read for anyone involved with social media (that's a lot of people theses days...) ( )