Insightful, like a social/online media-focused "Understanding Media", and just as verbose. A bit outdated by now, perhaps, but still interesting. ( )

must read for amazing information ( )

What a fascinating book! That is the only way I can describe it. I also consider it a wake up call to institutions like higher education. Recognize the power of amateur communications and adopt the methods or suffer surprise as other organizations have. Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations* should be on everyone's shelf. Through countless stories, Shirky explains how various technologies have disrupted the status quo. He explains how people have organized and made a significant difference without the overhead of a formal organization. Across eleven chapters, Shirky presents stories and technologies, and more importantly, he explains how the technologies caused a disruption in the status quo. Many of these disruptions, as he pointed out, would not be possible without the right technology. He shares examples such as the Catholic Church scandals where incidents were once swept under the rug; however, because of new technologies recent incidents had a groundswell of resistance due to the ease of communication. Read more ( )

Stopped about a quarter of the way in - just wasn't really feeling the easy-reading, pop approach. Interesting stuff, but found myself arguing against too many bits and bobs. Read it if you like though. ( )

Awesome book on how communities form and work. Uses some great examples of real works crowds, that I've actually heard about or even seen myself, so that's a good thing.

Several excellent explanations about social media, and it's impact, mine has several highlight marks, and page tabs in it. It's a keeper. ( )

I'm having trouble figuring out exactly why I like Clay Shirky so much. I have a few candidates for the main reason. First, he tends to have insightful things to say about topics I'm interested in. My favorite thing he has done is his lecture "Ontology is Overrated". However, while I'm not accusing him of being derivative, I can trace many of the ideas I like best in Shirky's work to Yochai Benkler.

So that leads me to think that perhaps what I like best about Shirky's work is his particular genius at finding interesting and revealing examples from which he extrapolates his key insights. In Here Comes Everybody, he tells the story of the lost phone, uses a wonderful comparison of reading social networking to hanging out in the mall. (It's not over-sharing, it's over-listening. On the web, someone like me can complain about vapid noise on Facebook, but if I were at the mall listening in to teens telling their stories it would be clear that I was the creepy one and the kids are just being kids.) From chapter to chapter, Shirky finds good examples and uses them to tease out what he thinks are the key principles.

The third candidate for "Why Nick like Clay Shirky so damn much" is that I tend to agree with his assertions. The printing press *IS* the best comparison for the read/write web. More *is* different. (We're both Internet exceptionalists.)

So, whether it is the quality of his insight, the power of his examples, or the persuasiveness of his conclusions, I tend to be a Shirky fan. Here Comes Everybody is an excellent example of his work and a must-read for anyone trying to make sense of what the current (or formerly current) state of communication technology is doing to us as a society. ( )

This book made me feel a little bit smarter for every chapter, and was a real page turner which is unusual for non-fiction. ( )

A good examination of the ways new social tools have changed our society and will continue to do so. Although the book is already more than four years old, an eternity in the world of Internet commentary, most of what he has to say is still valid—and because his tone is measured and he avoids gee-whizzing, it's not hard to imagine where he would have gone with his ideas in 2012.

Shirky takes off from the concept of Coasian economics, market theory originated by Ronald Coase in 1937 that looked at the contractual costs and benefits of hierarchical organizations and their advantages over the free market. The premise here is that because online communications have lowered the cost of gathering groups of people together—whether in money, effort, time, materials, or manpower—this radically alters all sorts of equations throughout society. He cycles through a series of anecdotal scenarios to make his points, explaining them clearly and relevantly, without jargon; the examples are well-picked and illustrate his ideas without being heavy-handed. And his commentary is open-ended enough that you can sit back afterward and extrapolate on how it bears on the wired world of 2012, what works and fails online, and why. It's smart and thoughtful, and still relevant—no mean feat for an Internet sociology study. ( )

Pre-dates the explosion in social media as corporate and personal branding platform, so, somewhat dated. That said, the big ideas remain relevant--and recent history provides a useful lens for understanding the internet today. ( )

An interesting overview of how the online world has been changed by social tools like wikipedia. It offers also many examples of how those tools interact with the "real world", dispelling -if it were necessary- the media-induced idea that "cyberspace" and everyday life don't mix.
It is a good read for those that want to discover the realities of social tools and social software and also interesting for those that are already familiar with these things as it offers a way of thinking about those from different perspectives. ( )

Enjoyed the epilogue the best: really synthesized the rest. I expected this book to be more practical and so when he drove home the practical at the end I appreciated it. ( )

A life-changing book, comparable to The Omnivore's Dilemma in how it reshaped my thinking on a subject. Highly recommended for anyone interested in how the web is impacting social interaction. While Shirky can drift into techno-utopianism from time to time, he seems to always look at the world with fresh eyes. Unlike other writers on the subject, Shirky's prose is clear, and his examples are quite convincing. ( )

A good analysis of the connection between people networks and networking tools etc and the power they unleash when they come together. ( )

Easy to read, Shirky is a classic author in the emerging technologies field. A must read for librarians interested in social media. ( )

I thought this would be an interesting read because it's all about stuff I know quite a lot about, basically people using the internet and other 21st century technologies to organise themselves and make things happen that would never have happened before. In the beginning though I found it a bit on the boring side. Mostly this was because I know quite a lot about the subject. A good proportion of the examples used in the text were already familiar to me. And I've read the blogs of practically everybody thanked by the author, many of whom are also quoted in the book. In the end though I gained something from reading this in book form rather than as a lot of little stories on the net. There were plenty of examples here that I hadn't heard about and plenty of extra elucidation about things I thought I understood. A worthwhile and entertaining read.

Clay Shirky, whose writing and presentations on Internet technology and social change are consistently sharp and engaging, provides a from-the-field report on our continuing evolution from hierarchical, highly organized entities to the far less formal collaborations fostered by social networking resources. “Social tools provide…action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive,” he reminds us (p. 47), and the result is explosive in terms of loosely organized groups’ ability to produce results previously unimagined. “Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by transaction costs. Now that group-forming has gone from hard to ridiculously easy, we are seeing an explosion of experiments with new groups and new kinds of groups,” he explains (p. 54). His explorations take us down a variety of paths, including what happens to the concept of “a professional” when social media tools open up a profession such as journalism to everyone through blogging; we’re also treated to an exploration of how collaboration succeeds in producing magnificent resources including Wikipedia. He is far from serving as an unquestioning cheerleader for what he observes in the use of social networking tools: “…a good social tool is like a good woodworking tool—it must be designed to fit the job being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do,” he notes (p. 265). By the end of "Here Comes Everybody," Shirky helps us establish a bit of perspective on the changes through which we are living and in which we are participating: “The invention of tools that facilitate group formation is less like ordinary technological change and more like an event, something that has already happened. As a result, the important questions aren’t about whether these tools will spread or reshape society but rather how they do so,” he concludes (p. 300). For those who are still wondering why so many people are diving into collaboration through online social networking tools, Shirky serves as a sympathetic and attractive guide. ( )

So far, awesome! I had no idea that Twitter and Blogger were started by the same guy.

This book unfolds and explains an interesting theory about the internet and how it changed modern communication, our day-to-day life and our thinking. I liked his description of the steps from the medieval scribers to Gutenberg's printing technique, from the telephone and the radio/TV to the first years of the Internet and then the generation of Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. It opened my eyes how much this revolution arose from economic (and time sparing) facts and rules and how professional writers saw the wrong danger for their professional future (not "America Today", but "The New York Times-online"). I learnt a lot of details I have never been aware of: That flash-mobs took place in Belorus for political reasons, that the Germans tanks in the Blitzkrieg were inferior to the French ones, but were equipped with radios, the development of Small World Patterns, and Linus and Meetup, and many other interesting details as well.

Now we get two the two stars I did not give to this book. First it's the lack of speed, especially in the beginning chapters. I mean how many words do you need to explain that it is slightly cheaper, quicker and more efficient to create a website to reach a million of readers in 2006 A.D. than to do the same by distributing hieroglyphics in 2006 B.C.? I think 34 words are enough to get he idea, but Shirky thinks it should take at least 20 pages.

Second – and that's probably only my problem – I have too often read about the "Birthday Paradox" in the last months. In many books and in most of the big papers. Seems to be en vogue nowadays. And it never works for me. Asked if I would take a bet if two of 50 people share the same birthday I would always say yes. Not because I look through the obscure rules of probability-math because I – as a professional gambler (lawyer) – take ANY wager no matter how bad my chances are. The same has to be said for the Evergreen “Prisoner’s Dilemma”. Next time I will read about his I will swear to whistle-blow everyone for every atrocity, no matter if he’s guilty or not. ( )

This is the kind of book that every teacher, school administrator, librarian, and school/district computer services manager should read and consider. As an educator, what I liked most about the book is that Shirky talks not so much about the technologies themselves as much as some of the ways that society and institutions may change due to the growth and mass adoption of a variety of communication technologies. This is a great read! ( )

19 Oct 2009 - Amazon (I had a lot of Amazon vouchers from the previous Xmas/Bday to spend!)

Apparently this book is quite controversial - I haven't looked at any reviews up to now as I don't want to influence this one.

Shirky does seem to spend a fairly substantial book telling us that new technology has given us new ways to form new types of - and larger - groups, which in turn is starting to change the way people interact with each other and with traditional organisations such as corporations and governments. He gives lots of examples, for instance students getting together on Facebook to complain against HSBC's treatment of their overdrafts, and the huge amount of information which poured out of China after the recent earthquakes, as examples of the latter, and services such as Flickr and Wikipedia, which allow the pooling of information and images without traditional management.

The author does rely on other people's research a fair bit, weaving in current luminaries such as Malcolm Gladwell and the people looking at six degrees of separation. But then little research is completely new and it does ground the work into other people's systems. It's really good on the history and actual workings of phenomena such as Meet Up (this section mentions BookCrossing!) and Wikipedia, and I think this is what actually gives the book its main worth to me, as a document of the times we're living in now, quite a few technologies and groups with which I interact, rather than as a ground-breaking work with a lot of new information in it.

Right - now I'll go and see what the controversy was about! ( )

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.