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. ( )