Book review: Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations

All things social and 2.0, digital and so on are all the hype. I do need to understand this as a Marketer and had a look at the book, so I figured I can say a few things for you to decide if you should read it or not.

Is the book for me?
If you want to understand what Facebook or Twitter are, and how to upload stuff to Flickr, no. This book bridges the gap between cute little stories how the “New Internet” changes the lives of people and serious academic theories of networks, organizations, motivational dilemmas of participants in these networks and many other things. It shows how you can make money as an amateur photographer or get information in ways noone dreamed about not so long ago, and how the new tools available might affect your life just about tomorrow, professionally or privately. If you don’t feel an urge to understand this, because you constantly feel like you don’t know something you should, it’s one of the books you could read, otherwise you might just wait if you are affected by some of the changes proposed in the book and adapt later. I’d say you can sleep calm.

Some things I found interesting though:
How the process of forming networks has been shortened to the max. Whether you need attendees of a parade who uploaded pictures or engineers in your field around the world who can help you solve problems. And how these networks extend to the physical world and can solve complex problems with little resources in not time.

Changing media paradigms: The ideas of broadcasting, which dominated the past, and conversation which takes over. The chance to publish globally in seconds at almost not cost. The role of professionals in a world spammed by “user-generated content” (e.g. journalists, photographers).

The problem of unmanaged division of labor. Who gives how much? Who takes too much? What’s the incentive if there’s no salary?And why does Open Source work after all (in some contexts)?

Network theory in a nutshell. Things like strong and weak ties, social capital, structural holes, bridges, nodes and many more I studied for months for my final thesis at the University are easily integrated in the text. Just for this reason the book is worth reading.