Here Comes Everybody Part 2

In the second part of his book, Shirky parallels personal motivation and collaborative production through social tools such as Wikipedia, Twitter, and Facebook. Wikipedia illustrates the combination of desire to inform others and a willingness to work cohesively to create said social forum. The advent of Wikipedia allowed for others to work on a "shared writing effort without needing formal management or process"(111). Every Wikipedia page, being the sum of progressive changes and alterations on specific subjects. Furthermore, Wikipedia highlights major themes in social tools such as software and community concerns. Since there is not one designated person responsible for managing information, researching and editing have been constant for five years and the added non profit aspect of these social tools allows for contributors to equally play a role in its development.
   

Shirky further asserts that anything that increases ability to share information increases our freedom to pursue goals, therefore assuming that everyone would contribute. However, this is not the case as Shirky illustrates the power law which shows that there is an imbalance in contributions and participation. Less readers creates loose conversation within smaller audiences. Shirky also notes specific reasons that writers contribute to social tools: to give random knowledge, vanity, and make a meaningful contribution by doing a good thing (132). These reasons also give explain why these social tools are not vandalized and can withstand disagreement. Additionally, the notion of love as a driving source for tools such as Wikipedia. Love propels tools such as Wikipedia and provides for its improvement and defense. Shirky makes a clear distinction of love as well, as he states that love is not what it used to be, now love is "less squishy and less private".


Collaborative action and institutional challenges have allowed for collaborations such as Wikipedia, Twitter and Facebook to challenge bigger corporations and in some instances government. In the wake of the priest scandal, the internet was readily available to spread more information only after the scandal had initially began. This variation in knowledge between 1992 and 2002 showed that the internet lent itself as a new form of sharing. Bloggers and internet reports were readily available to challenge and maintain the story in the face of the public in contrast to newspaper clippings. This gave way to group formations that allowed for " easier and wider dissemination of information " (151). Social tools removed barriers that were present in disseminating this information; the locality of information and barriers to group reaction. By working together in groups, people were able to extend the reaction and result of the scandals and challenge the way the Church regulated information to the public.

As a result of bigger audiences and availability of information- people have incorporated tools meant for fast communication in lieu of traditional forms of interaction. Text messaging changes definitive plans in society as people are able to change notice through of ease of communication. In his airlines example, people were able to make progress only after calling the owner of the airlines and demanding the gate opened after 7 hours of waiting on board. With telephones, people are able to stop traveling for communication and assume that these tools are actually good substitutes for travel. Shirky further concludes that people must make distinctions between positive forms of social awareness such as alcoholics anonymous and pro-ana websites. Although both create forums for groups gathering on a specific cause, it is obvious that most approval will go to the alcoholic anonymous. Overall, Shirky highlights the way organization through social tools has not only revolutionized how society is affected by daily issues but also the level that it organizes individuals with each other.


Shirky explains that one of the most important factors to the success of a network, is the concept of a Small World.  The key components to a Small World is that there are densely connected small groups and sparsely connected large groups.  This means that in a small group of people, everyone knows everyone else but there are few connections between a small group and the next small group. The advantages of this network, are that information can more easily be transmitted along large groups because the people connecting the clusters of people will quickly pass along the information to all clusters.  Each cluster is usually drawn together over a similar interest so they will disperse the information among themselves. This system combines bridging capital, how information travels across groups, and bonding capital, the amount of trust you place in people in your group.

Another key component to the success of organizations is the amount of failure.  Shirky brings up the example of Meetup, which he claims succeeds because of how many groups fail to materialize.  This is because Meetup has set such a low barrier to participation that many people are willing to try and fail which increases the likelihood of a group succeeding as opposed to an organization that has a high barrier to participation which decreases the likelihood people will try out the service or organization.  This logic holds true for any other free service available such as Flickr, blogs, and mailing lists.  One of the most successful forms of this failure is open source software.  As Shirky points out, on Sourceforge, a leading open source download hub, the leading downloaded software gets millions of downloads cumulatively and tens of thousands in one day.  However, at the 95^th percentile, the software getting downloaded is only around one thousand cumulative downloads and at the 75^th percentile, the software never gets downloaded.  This exemplifies the 80/20 power law distribution which essentially means 20% of anything in a network gets 80% of the resources.  So 20% of the software on Sourceforge gets 80% of the downloads.  This is important organizing groups according to the “publish-then-filter” since people can try a group for anything, and then filter out the failed ones.   In previous methods of software development and organizing though, companies and organizers had to ignore people who would only be casually involved because they were dealing with limited resources and could only pursue the 80% of successful products.  However, with such a low cost to online organizing and developing open-source software, today all 100% of the successful products can be made available.

Shirky sums up the success of a group into three aspects, the promise, tool, and bargain.  The promise is the key to attracting new people to your organization.  Organizations have to promise something that will interest people and then also set the barrier to participation low enough to lure people into joining.  The tool is important because not every social tool can fit in every situation.  For example, Twitter could not have organized the airline protest and blogging would not have been effective for the Egyptian prodemocracy activists.  Each situation has a good fit for each tool and finding the best tool for your group is crucial to its success.  Finally, the bargain is necessary because it will keep a person engaged.  The bargain is what the person receives and contributes to the community.  For example, in a wiki, the bargain is you can edit any article, and any person can edit your article.  While not all bargains are this simple, they are the final component in building a successful group with social tools.  However, finding the right combination of these elements is very difficult which is why many groups fail but those few that can find the right combination succeed overwhelmingly.

Shirky concludes with a look to the future of social tools.  As new technologies and tools are constantly developed, the patterns under which they operate will continue to change.  It’s impossible to tell what the next new technology is but it’s certain to affect the way people live their lives and how communities and organizations operate.  However, Shirky expects young people to continue to play a role in our society adopting these technologies since we are more likely to try new things but eventually these tools are adopted by society as a whole.