Here Comes Everybody

My summer reading task for work was to get through Clay Shirky’s Here Comes everybody. I have just finished it and have to say I really enjoyed reading it. I want to summarise the good things I picked up from it here before the sunshine and Pimms dulls the memory.

1. I’ve always loved Alexrod’s work but hadn’t thought about applying tit-for-tat to social networks before now.

2. Ridiculously easy group formation is the key to the changes we are seeing online in social networks now. Seb Parquet

3. Failure is the way to learn, lower the barrier to even making the decision to try something and fail faster, learn quicker and cheaper (‘failure for free’).

4. Flash Mobs – cool stuff, especially liked the example of the original flash mob in New York.

5. Much of what Shirky writes about does not rely on fancy technology, email, discussion boards and mobile phones have paved the way.

6. Small worlds: Duncan Watts. Need to look at this more closely for our own projects

7. Bridging and bonding social capital is something we need to think about for our small worlds project to bring our networks together. Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.