Last Friday I tried a little experiment with Twitter: I used it to live-review the Clay Shirky book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Amazon US).

Why did I do it?

It wasn’t a preview copy, so there was no ‘scoop’ here.

It wasn’t a live event, either. As Dave Lee pointed out, “A book is a book. It’s not changing. Read it all and then tell me whether it’s any good or not.”

I did it, well, because I could. Because I wanted to give myself a reason to read the book without distraction. Because I wanted to see how viral it would go. Because I wanted to see how social you could make that most anti-social of activities: reading a book.

The thing is, Dave was mistaking Twitter for a pure publishing platform. What I discovered was this: it was about a conversation, not a publication:

• As I twittered, other users chipped in with their responses, thoughts, and additions, like this, and this, and this.
• Others added leads based on the ideas mentioned, useful links, and examples.
• And still others asked questions, which I then attempted to answer (“Does he acknowledge the role of bloggers in elevating the cases of missing persons who are traditionally given short shrift?” twittered Kim Pearson).
• While others suggested things I should have included.
• So in addition to reading the book, I was engaging in a dialogue with others.
• As a distribution technology, there was some viral stuff going on, Jeff Jarvis’ tweet being picked up and passed on, for instance.
• And finally, it provided the opportunity for group-reviewing via aggregation and tools like hashtags and tweetscan. Jon Bounds joined me as a reviewer, and wrote about it here. His tweets of the day can be read here.

Now you might suggest the same things could be achieved with a blog and comments, but Twitter is a more conversational platform. And more instantaneous: you are quickly notified of tweets @you (indeed, you can text ‘track @yourname’ to Twitter to get text messages whenever someone uses that phrase).

It is also more iterative: a blog post is more ‘finished’ than a series of Twitter tweets. I didn’t have to worry as much about structure or what to leave in or out – if I felt I was reading an important point, I twittered it. If it sparked off a thought or example of my own, I twittered it. If I wanted a link for more information… well, you get the idea.

As has been so often the case with Twitter, what I discovered was: it is what you make it.

If you followed the twitter-review, please let me know what your experience was of it, good or bad.

Meanwhile, here’s the transcript – read from the bottom upwards.

PS: If you follow me on Twitter apologies if you were cursing my existence last Friday. Normal service has been resumed.

@foodiesarah No continuation tomorrow. Will see what the reaction is like before deciding whether to do any more twittering on the book. 07:39 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to foodiesarah

@egrommet you may be able to tell me how many tweets I did in total then? 07:38 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to egrommet

@mattwardman I mean sponsorship as in charity – as in a sponsored fucking marathon! 03:46 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to mattwardman

end of Chap9. I’m going to stop there. But please add your thoughts @paulbradshaw or #herecomeseverybody 03:41 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl

Creativity as an import-export business 03:41 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl

I wonder if our journo blogs are actually about bonding capital rather than bridging capital. We’re the Howard Deans of online journalism. 03:35 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl

Social capital – difference between bonding capital (within homogeonous groups) and bridging capital (across heterogenous groups) 03:33 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl

I should have gotten fucking sponsorship for doing this 03:31 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl

chap9: Six degrees of separation 03:28 PM April 04, 2008 from web

small world networks – http://tinyurl.com/o9guv 03:28 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl

@azeem_a has just popped in to say “Take a break, man!” 03:26 PM April 04, 2008 from web in reply to Azeem_A end chap8 – 3 more chaps + epilogue. Come on. 03:22 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl 3) negative effects, e.g. Pro-Anorexic groups, newly robust criminal “networks” 03:21 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl 2) current social bargains, e.g. rules over media coverage of an election 03:20 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl 3 kinds of loss: people whose jobs relied on solving a formerly hard problem, e.g. the media 03:19 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @Reynolds why do you need to spell trebuchet? 03:17 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to Reynolds Pro-anorexia groups on mag message boards – it’s not just groups “we approve of” 03:17 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl That’s why I did #jeecamp. Offline is the new online. 03:12 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Talking about Meetup – its success was in enabling online communities to meet offline. People want to meet. 03:11 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl #herecomeseverybody chap8: it’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma! 10 points to @petelewis 03:03 PM April 04, 2008 from web Talking about something called Twitter. Never heard of it. 02:59 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl O/T: Wishing I was in Texas. Wishing someone would pay for me to go to places like Texas. 02:56 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl another story: how radios helped the Germans (poorer kit, smaller army) beat the French in #WWII 02:54 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl “open source guerillas” http://tinyurl.com/5dekue 02:52 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @tomguarriello it’s an old model, yes, which is probably why I stop reading after 6 chapters normally… 02:51 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to tomguarriello #herecomeseverybody chap7 – more stories. Protests. Berlin Wall. Flash Mobs. 02:47 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl yes I’mstill reading the same book. end chap6 02:42 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Classic model for spread of disease: likelihood of infection, of contact between any two people, and overall population size 02:42 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl At this point #HCE is reading like another of those ‘illustrate the same point with 8 different stories’ books – e.g. Long Tail 02:35 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl chap6 – looking at the church it seems. 02:34 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl end Chap5. Don’t think I’ll finish this today. 02:30 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p139 “Wikipedia… replaces guarantees offered by institutions with probabilities supported by process” 02:12 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @petelewis always interested… 02:09 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to petelewis p137 “in the absence of a functioning community, a wiki will suffer from the Tragedy of the Commons, as the Wikitorial did.” 02:08 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl ‘a wiki is a hybrid of tool and community’ I like that. And flickr. Facebook. Twitter… 02:07 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl it’s about context – AOL sued by its volunteers when its stock soared. Billy Bragg has a point about Bebo… 02:05 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Ultimatum game – http://tinyurl.com/2z9jjf 02:04 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl the Kilroy was here pleasure of changing something in the world (editing #Wikipedia) 02:01 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @stevebridger show off. 01:59 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to stevebridger So my blog is a wedding reception? (p130) I’m just being polite with those emails and tweets. I only invited you because you owe me money… 01:55 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl power law distributions tend to describe systems of interacting elements, rather than just collections of variable elements 01:53 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl here comes the long tail… 01:51 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl power law distribution curves – the imbalance drives large social systems. Makes sense, but where’s the evidence? 01:50 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Ch4 so far: wikipedia, the first wiki, and the importance of the rhetoric of ‘pedia’ in wikipedia’s success 01:49 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @stevebridger any comments to make so far? 01:49 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to stevebridger OK, back again. I cheated – read some of the book over a sandwich. 01:49 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Are you following the Twitter-review of #herecomeseverybody? If so tweet @paulbradshaw 01:11 PM April 04, 2008 from web New blog post: SFTW#5 http://tinyurl.com/2svx6s 01:10 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl End of chapt 4 – I’m off to write a blog post then dinner break (you might call it lunch). 12:38 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p107 first mention of the word ‘revolution’… not bad. 12:37 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl He says telephones were designed for conversation – that’s not strictly true: people tried to broadcast with them. 12:36 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p104 we now have media that supports making and sharing as well as consuming. 12:34 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @bounder about to take a break too… 12:33 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to bounder communities of practice – http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ 12:31 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl great Cory Doctorow quote: “onversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.” http://tinyurl.com/335tqp 12:30 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @bounder has leapt ahead of me. I should stop and just read his tweets 😉 12:29 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to bounder p95 “difference between conversational tools and broadcast tools was arbitrary, but difference between conversing and broadcasting is real” 12:23 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Human limits on attention… this is why I’m going to make OJB a group blog… as soon as I have the time 😀 12:20 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Must stop feeling guilty about unanswered emails… 12:17 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl This is why Cory Doctorow spends half of every day checking his emails, and has set up filters. 12:17 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @bounder is reading too… 12:15 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to bounder “even when a medium is two-way, its most popular practitioners will be forced into a one-way pattern.” 12:14 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p92 very good exploration of ‘cognitive’ limits of interactivity… 12:14 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @mattwardman pw? explain? 12:13 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to mattwardman @podnosh …but also terrifying: we don’t realise the power we have, and the importance, and the responsibility. 12:11 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to podnosh @podnosh I think that’s what makes this time so exciting – people have the opportunity to define the shape of the new. 12:11 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to podnosh in public but not for the public – e.g. livejournal and, I think, Twitter. 12:09 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Difference between ‘I love you’ on a letter and TV – didn’t Marshal McLuhan do that? (only with billboards) No attribution in notes at end. 12:04 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Ooh, broadcast media are ‘conceptually shaped’ like a megaphone; communications media ‘like a tube’ 12:01 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Chapter 4: more media, UGC 12:01 PM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @pinman very good idea. If this thing works I may try it with we think… 11:59 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to pinman The term “scribe” disappeared as it no longer denoted a professional class. Methinks: will “journalist”? 11:53 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Scott Bradner: “The internet means you don’t have to convince anyone else that something is a good idea before trying it” 11:51 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl covering journalistic privilege and who is a professional photographer. Nice line on whistleblowing without whistleblowing. 11:49 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl social lag between technology and society. Old systems get broken long before new ones become stable 11:44 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl “from news as an institutional prerogative to news as part of a communications ecosystem” – it’s not news because news orgs say it is now 11:41 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl It’s the Trent Lott story again… 11:37 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p60 “the web didn’t introduce a new competitor into the old ecosystem, as USA Today had done. The web created a new ecosystem” 11:33 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @professorkim kinda – but he moved on from that example quite quickly. 11:31 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to professorkim hence, suing mp3 downloaders. 11:30 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl “…so preservation of the original problems became an economic imperative.” 11:29 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p59 I love this line: “The commercial viability of most media business involves providing [solutions to problems of moving content]… 11:29 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl But let’s not get into an argument over semantics. 11:27 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Chapter 3: media stuff. He seems to think journalists are “professionals”. Not sure everyone would agree, esp. NUJ. 11:26 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Readl examples of collective action online are still relatively rare. End of Chap 2. 11:17 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl aka problem of freeloaders. 11:14 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Collective action creates shared responsibility. “Tragedy of the commons”: http://tinyurl.com/4xobe 11:14 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Unlike sharing, cooperating “creates group identity” 11:09 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Video at http://cyber.law.harvard.ed… 11:07 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl The rungs on the ladder: sharing, cooperation and collective action – I thought the video of him had him talking about four? 11:07 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @egrommet ah I see. Definitely. 11:05 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to egrommet The Coasean floor. Not easily twitterable, so: http://www.techliberation.c… 11:02 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @egrommet not media as educator, media as platform. While we’re still all on their sites… 10:58 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to egrommet The org chart story. Haven’t I read this before? In Everything is Miscellaneous perhaps? 10:55 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Thinks: finding missing persons is “outside the purview” of traditional media – but they should start providing the *tools* to do so… 10:54 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Am hoping he’s going to say something about Flickr clusters… nope. Shame. 10:49 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl From “Gather, then share” to “Share, then gather” 10:47 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Now talking about Flickr, Mermaid Parade, Jul7 bombings 10:47 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Do we have a free market discourse going on here? 10:38 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @marshallmanson – want to chip in and be added to the aggregator? 10:35 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to marshallmanson @markmayhew – sorry, translation: the group is more than the sum of its parts. 10:35 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to MarkMayhew “Self preservation of the organisation becomes job no.1” – very much my experiences of charities… 10:34 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @marshallmanson I’ll twitter as much of the book as I can! This is my way of forcing myself to read it now. 10:33 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to marshallmanson I forgot just how full of soundbites the Cluetrain Manifesto was… 10:30 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p28: “Sociology is not just psychology applied to groups.” 10:30 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2: starts with The Birthday Paradox. I like this. http://tinyurl.com/98st2 10:27 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @adbar has found two sample chapters on Amazon. Glad you can join us. @bounder has started reviewing. 10:24 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to adbar End of Chaper 1. @cshirky hope you’re watching. 10:21 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl (technological determinism disclaimer) 10:21 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p23 “None of the absolute advantages of institutions … have disappeared. Instead… most of the *relative* advatages… have.” 10:20 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p20 “Tools that provide simple ways of creating groups lead to new groups, lots of new groups, and … more kinds of groups.” 10:19 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Costs of creating a new group of joining one have collapsed. 10:18 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl @adbar does amazon not even have a sample chapter? 10:18 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl in reply to adbar Eric Raymond’s plausible promise: http://tinyurl.com/38y6wd 10:14 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Can anyone find a sample chapter from Here COmes EVerybody for @adbar? 10:13 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p17 …thinking of Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie… 10:13 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl p14: “That’s the world we’ve already got. The real question is, What happens next?” 10:11 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl OK, he’s tackling the inequality thing. Now I see why he’s picked this story – it’s complicated, y’see. 10:10 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl But it’s also about who can tell a story – the media literate 10:07 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl What worried me is the people who have leverage? The connected. It used to be an old boys network; now it’s a new boys network. 10:07 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl It seems to me it’s about leveraging your network and their networks 10:06 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Starts with a great story about phone theft – more here: http://www.evanwashere.com/… 10:03 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Resisting temptation to skip straight to chapters on media, on the grounds that they’ll actually probably be the least illuminating for me 10:02 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl I hate hardback books. They’re not designed to be read – they’re designed to be *kept*. And displayed. Paperbacks are so much more usable. 10:01 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl Here beginneth the Twittered review of Here Comes Everybody… 10:01 AM April 04, 2008 from twhirl