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: Continue reading →