Notes & Treats

FOR READERS WHO ACTUALLY LOOK BACK HERE

Preface

1. Pew Research Center, “Social Isolation and New Technology,” Pew Research Center Publications, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1398/internet-mobile-phones-impact-american-social-networks.

2. The number 42 is the answer to the meaning of life, according to author Douglas Adams.

3. “Pale, male, and stale” refers to the exclusion of women, people of color, and others from conversations about change, and thus the same ideas get repeated over and over. More on this in chapter 2.

Chapter One

1. Birthday of the Internet: September 2, 1969. Fun stories in the comments on this Boing Boing post: “Happy 40th Birthday, Internet,” http://boingboing.net/2009/09/02/happy-40th-birthday.html.

2. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), “A Little History of the World Wide Web,” http://www.w3.org/History.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland. The world’s largest particle physics lab, it holds a large computing center where the technology for the World Wide Web was developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN.

6. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. It was one of the original sites of the National Science Foundation’s Supercomputer Centers Program, and offers engineers and scientists powerful computing and expert support for their research. http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/.

7. W3C, “A Little History of the World Wide Web.”

8. Wikipedia, “The WELL,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WELL_%28virtual_community%29 (accessed September 15, 2009).

9. Wikipedia, “Blog,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog (accessed January 22, 2010).

10. Wikipedia, “Independent Media Center,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Media_Center (accessed December 8, 2009).

11. Full disclosure, my very good friend Larry (who taught me HTML in college) worked there and tried to get me a job there several times. They had a pool table and stand-up arcade games and beer in the fridge, so of course we all wanted to work there.

12. As in the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game, where one player names a movie actor, and the other player has to connect that actor to Kevin Bacon by using actors starring in common movies, within six steps, or “degrees.” Bacon himself became so fond of the game that he started a nonprofit called SixDegrees.org that uses social networking to raise money for good causes.

13. Laura Green, “Grade-A Power Struggle,” Palm Beach Post News, http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/grade-a-power-struggle-34885.html (accessed December 9, 2009).

14. “Testing Is Not Teaching!” Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/testingisnotteaching.

15. As of the time of this writing. Last check-in on the group: January 22, 2010.

16. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2000), 41, 48.

17. Wikipedia, “Interpersonal ties,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_tie (accessed September 15, 2009).

18. For more information on how stories and information spread, check out academic Henry Jenkins’s very accessible work, most notably his “If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead” series on his blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, http://henry jenkins.org/2009/02/if_it_doesnt_spread_its_dead_p.html.

Chapter Two

1. Stan Schroeder, “Facebook: From 100 to 200 Million Users in 8 Months,” Mashable, April 8, 2009, http://mashable.com/2009/04/08/facebook-from-100-to-200-million-users-in-8-months/ (accessed September 15, 2009).

2. Facebook, “Press Room,” http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php? statistics (accessed January 22, 2010).

3. Stan Schroeder, “Stats: Flat Month for Social Media, With Some Surprises,” Mashable, September 9, 2009, http://mashable.com/2009/09/09/stats-flat-month-social-media/ (accessed September 15, 2009).

4. Namely, middle- and upper-class straight white guys. I’ve got nothing against y’all—some of my best friends are straight white guys! I just want to mix things up a wee bit.

5. David McCandless, “Who Rules the Social Web?” Information is Beautiful, October 2, 2009, http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/who-rules-the-social-web/ (accessed November 29, 2009).

6. “Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009,” Pew Internet & American Life, October 21, 2009, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/17-Twitter-and-Status-Updating-Fall-2009.aspx?r=1 (accessed December 3, 2009).

7. LeWeb ’09 Speakers, http://www.leweb.net/program/speakers (accessed December 11, 2009).

8. Clay Shirky, “Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality,” February 8, 2003, http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

9. Keith Hampton, Lauren Sessions, Eun Ja Her, Lee Rainie, “Social Isolation and New Technology,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, November 4, 2009, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/18--Social-Isolation-and-New-Technology.aspx (accessed November 29, 2009).

10. John Horrigan, “Home Broadband Adoption 2009,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, June 17, 2009, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/10-Home-Broadband-Adoption-2009.aspx (accessed September 15, 2009).

11. Ibid.

12. Aaron Smith and others, “The Internet and Civic Engagement,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, September 1, 2009, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/15--The-Internet-and-Civic-Engagement.aspx?r=1 (accessed September 15, 2009).

13. Eszter Hargittai and Gina Walejko, “The Participation Divide: Content Creation and Sharing in the Digital Age,” Information, Communication & Society 11, no. 2 (March 2008), 239–56, http://www.eszter.com/research/pubs/A23.Hargittai.Walejko-ParticipationDivide.pdf (accessed September 15, 2009).

14. Noam Cohen, “Wikipedia Looks Hard at Its Culture,” New York Times, August 30, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/business/media/31link.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

15. See note 4.

16. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, not that there’s anything wrong with them.

17. Patrick McGeehan and Mathew R. Warren, “Job Losses Show Wider Racial Gap in New York,” New York Times, July 12, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/nyregion/13unemployment.html (accessed December 13, 2009).

18. “2008 Hate Crime Statistics,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/data/table_01.html.

19. “US: Soaring Rates of Rape and Violence Against Women,” Human Rights Watch, December 18, 2009, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/18/us-soaring-rates-rape-and-violence-against-women (accessed December 13, 2009).

20. Jos, “Suicide ends transgender lives too,” Feministing.com, November 20, 2009, http://www.feministing.com/archives/018985.html (accessed December 13, 2009).

21. David Cay Johnston, “The Gap Between Rich and Poor Grows in the United States,” New York Times, March 29, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/worldbusiness/29iht-income.4.5075504.html (accessed December 13, 2009).

22. Jason Kottke, “Gender Diversity at Web Conferences,” February 27, 2007, http://www.kottke.org/07/02/gender-diversity-at-web-conferences (accessed December 11, 2009).

23. Joshua Breitbart, “How Policy Is the New Literacy,” People’s Production House, March 28, 2009.

24. Shireen Mitchell, interview by author, July 8, 2009.

25. Ibid.

26. Horrigan, “Home Broadband Adoption 2009.”

27. Breitbart, “How Policy Is the New Literacy.”

28. Brian Smith, “Public Education Needs to Embrace the Information Age,” the Grio, October 13, 2009, http://www.thegrio.com/2009/10/during-my-final-year-of.php (accessed November 29, 2009).

29. Eszter Hargittai, “The Digital Reproduction of Inequality,” in Social Stratification, edited by David Grusky (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008), 936–44.

30. Breitbart, “How Policy Is the New Literacy.”

31. danah boyd, “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online,” Personal Democracy Forum, New York, June 30, 2009, http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

32. Ibid.

33. RapLeaf, “Friends of Men vs. Women on Social Networks,” April 30, 2008, http://www.rapleaf.com/business/press_release/gender (accessed September 15, 2009).

34. Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski, “New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets,” Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2009, http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_ men_follo.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

35. Tara Hunt, “Women, Technology and Social Capital,” Women Who Tech 2007 conference, http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/women-who-tech-presentation-women-technology-and-social-capital (accessed September 15, 2009).

36. Chris Brassington, “English Speaking Hispanics Lead in Mobile Internet Growth . . . ,” Huffington Post, August 12, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-brassington/english-speaking-hispanic_b_257312.html (accessed December 8, 2009).

37. Katrin Verclas, interview by author, September 1, 2009.

38. Daisy Hernandez, “Latino Teens Used Cell Phones and MySpace.com to Mobilize,” ColorLines, July 1, 2006.

39. James Briggs, “Social Minus Mobile = Fail,” iMedia Connection, September 1, 2009, http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24280.asp (accessed September 15, 2009).

40. Horrigan, “Home Broadband Adoption 2009.”

Chapter Three

1. Wikipedia, “Gift economy,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy (accessed September 15, 2009).

2. Wikipedia, “Open source,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source (accessed September 15, 2009).

3. Check out all available licenses at Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/.

4. Tara Hunt, “Women, Technology and Social Capital,” Women Who Tech 2007 conference, http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/women-who-tech-presentation-women-technology-and-social-capital (accessed September 15, 2009).

5. Jessica Clark, interview by author, December 1, 2009.

6. More on Independents Hall at http://www.indyhall.org/.

7. Wikipedia, “Internet Relay Chat,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat (accessed September 15, 2009).

8. Susan Mernit, interview by author, September 14, 2009.

9. Of course, nothing’s perfect.

10. Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning, “Kids’ Participation in Online Interest-Based Communities Leads to Offline Civic Engagement,” http://spotlight.macfound.org/btr/entry/kids_participation_online_communities_offline_civic_engagement/ (accessed December 11, 2009).

11. Internet Archive’s collection of health and hygiene movies: http://www.sharethischange.com/healthhygiene.

12. I had a conversation with technology poobah and author Howard Rheingold, in which I asked him what he was optimistic about for the future. He told me that he was optimistic about pretty much nothing, but that he’d chosen to remain hopeful in general. The alternate choice was being a nihilist, and that’s no good for being a productive person on the planet.

13. Clive Thompson, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” New York Times, September 5, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

14. I’ll just say it: I freaking love these hotels. I’ve stayed in three or four of them, I think, and they’re all just lovely with lovely people working there.

15. Burning Man is a yearly festival held in the Nevada desert where people do kooky free-livin’ things. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man.

16. Chip Conley, “A CEO’s Dilemma: Should I Take My Burning Man Pics off Facebook?” BNet, November 3, 2009, http://www.bnet.com/2403-13058_23-358555.html (accessed December 8, 2009).

17. Too much information!

18. Not In Our Town’s website and social network: http://www.niot.org/.

19. Karen Araiza, “Pool Boots Kids Who Might ‘Change the Complexion,’” NBC Philadelphia, July 8, 2009, http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/Pool-Boots-Kids-Who-Might-Change-the-Complexion.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

20. Elon James White, “TWiB! Quickie: ‘Please don’t change the complexion of our pool,’” This Week in Blackness, July 8, 2009, http://thisweek inblackness.com/2009/07/08/twib-quickie-please-dont-change-the-complexion-of-our-pool/ (accessed September 15, 2009).

21. Ludovic Blain, interview by author, December 9, 2009,

22. Bob Holman, interview by author, New York, July 20, 2009.

23. In fact, someone is! Check out Jennifer Pozner’s Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV (New York: Avalon, 2010).

24. Go watch this video right now. I know I shouldn’t tell you to put down this book, but do it. You won’t regret it: http://www.sharethischange.com/wesch.

25. 25. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

Chapter Four

1. This is the title of a book by social media expert Seth Godin: Everyone’s an Expert (about something), http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_next_free_e.html.

2. Baratunde Thurston, interview by author, August 2, 2009.

3. Don’t laugh. Some of them are very smart! But not Ted Stevens, the former U.S. senator who thinks the Internet is made up of a “series of tubes,” thus allowing “Intertubes” to forever be part of the online lexicon. I feel a little sorry for him because it’s clear to me what happened. He needed to be educated on how the Internet works, and someone called up the IT guy to have him explain it. The IT guy probably went through 80 other metaphors that just didn’t click, probably tried to explain the concept of network design, and the only thing that stuck was the image of clicking together hamster tubes. Poor IT guy. I bet he bangs his head every time someone says “Intertubes.” Which is often.

4. Jim Hightower’s claim to fame. http://jimhightower.com/jim.

5. More on the RIAA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recording_Industry_Association_of_America.

6. David McGuire, “Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales,” Washington Post, March 29, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34300-2004Mar29 (accessed December 11, 2009).

7. Jeff Jarvis, “Attention + Influence do not equal Authority,” BuzzMachine, December 28, 2008, http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/12/28/attention-influence-do-not-equal-authority/ (accessed September 15, 2009).

8. Michelle Greer, “How Someone With 2000 Twitter Followers Can Be More Powerful than a Person with 25,000,” Michelle’s Blog, June 30, 2009, http://www.michellesblog.net/twiter/how-someone-with-2000-twitter-followers-can-be-more-powerful-than-a-person-with-25000 (accessed September 15, 2009).

9. A great real-world example of this in action is a test that Beth Kanter, a writer and consultant on social media for nonprofits, and Geoff Livingston, cofounder of Zoetica, who does social media strategy consulting, performed to see if Beth’s many casual followers were more engaged than Geoff’s smaller following. Read more here: “What 100K Twitter Followers Gets You,” http://geofflivingston.com/2009/11/03/what-100k-twitter-followers-gets-you/.

10. For a great visualization tool that maps out influence by political website and topic, have a look at PoliticoSphere, http://politicosphere.net/.

11. Flickr, “Explore/About Interestingness,” http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/ (accessed September 15, 2009).

12. If you’re the leader of a social change organization and you’re ready to make the leap into the brave new world of using the power of social networks to advance your mission, a great book to start with is Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s The Networked Nonprofit (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010).

13. Stowe Boyd, “Steve Rubel Becomes Another Attention Economist,” / Message, June 12, 2007, http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2007/06/steve_rubel_bec.html (accessed December 1, 2009).

14. The absence of tone and body language seems to shunt slightly annoying words straight into our reptile brains and get us all upset right away. Fascinating read, check it out: Daniel Goleman, “Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior,” New York Times, February 20, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/health/psychology/20essa.html.

15. Remember when a “breaking news” bulletin on the television news actually meant something?

16. Danny Sullivan, “Jeff Goldblum Is NOT Dead, Despite What Google Says,” Search Engine Land, http://searchengineland.com/jeff-goldblum-is-not-dead-despite-what-google-says-21588 (accessed November 27, 2009).

17. Goldblum handily addressed the misinformation in a hilarious appearance on The Colbert Report a few days later: Colbert Nation, http://www.colbert nation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/220019/june-29-2009/jeff-goldblum-will-be-missed (accessed November 27, 2009).

18. The story originated with a prank website that allows anyone to plug a celebrity’s name into a news story template and generate a fake news report. See “Cliff Death Hoax,” Snopes.com, http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/cliffdeath.asp (accessed November 27, 2009).

19. “Death of Little Mikey,” Snopes.com, http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/poprocks.asp (accessed December 13, 2009).

20. Wikipedia, “Iranian presidential election, 2009,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2009 (accessed December 12, 2009).

21. “Ahmadinejad defiant on ‘free’ Iran poll,” BBC News, June 14, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8099115.stm (accessed December 12, 2009).

22. Daniel Terdiman, “‘#CNNFail’: Twitterverse slams network’s Iran absence,” CNET News, June 14, 2009, http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10264398-2.html (accessed December 12, 2009).

23. An excellent source for deeper investigation into technology’s role in the Iranian protests is a talk that Katrin Verclas, cofounder of MobileActive.org, gave for the Personal Democracy Forum network on July 9, 2009: http://personaldemocracy.com/audio/social-media-crisis-lessons-iran-election-aftermath-katrin-verclas-mobileactiveorg. Many thanks to Katrin for discussing these events in depth with me.

24. Dan Gillmor, “Toward a Slow-News Movement,” Mediactive, November 8, 2009, http://mediactive.com/2009/11/08/toward-a-slow-news-movement/ (accessed December 2, 2009).

25. Christine Cupaiuolo, “New Mammogram Guidelines Are Causing Confusion, But Here’s Why They Make Sense,” Our Bodies Our Blog, November 18, 2009, http://www.ourbodiesourblog.org/blog/2009/11/mammograms-guidelines-are-causing-confusion-but-they-make-sense (accessed December 11, 2009).

26. Yeah, I said it. You can ignore some things. Many things, in fact! Read on.

27. Want to learn more about filtering your e-mail? Watch this video tutorial I made: http://www.sharethischange.com/email.

28. Mike Musgrove, “E-Mail Reply to All: ‘Leave Me Alone,’” Washington Post, May 25, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052402258.html (accessed December 12, 2009).

29. If you encounter people who do this, they are loony. Walk away slowly, with no sudden movements.

Chapter Five

1. Carolyn Kellogg, “Amazon de-ranks so-called adult books, including National Book Award winner,” April 12, 2009, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-deranks-gayfriendly-books-the-twitterverse-notices.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

2. Rachel Deahl and Jim Milliot, “Amazon Says Glitch to Blame for ‘New’ Adult Policy,” Publishers Weekly, April 12, 2009, http://www.publishers weekly.com/article/CA6651080.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

3. The “glitch” response was a mistake on many levels. We’ll talk about them more in “Resources”; also, Amazon’s final answer on the de-ranking was that it made the errors while updating the catalog over the weekend. See the Toronto Star’s report here: Vit Wagner, “Giant Amazon error spurs PR storm,” April 14, 2009, http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/Books/article/617982 (accessed September 15, 2009).

4. Jo Freeman, “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” 1970, http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm (accessed January 22, 2010).

5. Just to be clear, I believe in the power of echo chambers as one tool in an activist ecosystem. There are times when rallying the troops is absolutely necessary, and the pejorative association that some people have with “echo chamber” is a huge bummer. For more on progressive echo chambers—and how to use networked media to both strengthen and supersede them—check out the book Beyond the Echo Chamber, by Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke (New York: New Press, 2009), http://www.beyondtheecho.net/.

6. Wikipedia, “Power law,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law (accessed September 15, 2009).

7. danah boyd, interview by author, August 3, 2009.

8. Cheryl Contee, interview by author, July 9, 2009.

9. I had the great fortune of receiving lists of blog posts that address the role of allies in different situations, a role that is instrumental in any kind of social justice work. That list can be found at http://sharethischange.com/ally. Many thanks to Carmen Van Kerckhove of New Demographic and Jessica Hoffman of make/shift for their contributions to the list.

10. You can find many good, fun quotes at http://jimhightower.com/.

11. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Building on the Promise of Diversity: How We Can Move to the Next Level in Our Workplaces, Our Communities, and Our Society (New York: Amacom Books, 2005), 103.

12. Jessica Hoffman, “On Prisons, Borders, Safety, and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists,” make/shift and AlterNet.org, April 4, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/81260/ (accessed September 15, 2009).

13. Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear (New York: Basic Books), 60.

14. Rinku Sen, interview by author, August 13, 2009.

15. It takes a certain amount of experience and slightly thicker skin to figure out who is just giving you a hard time for the sake of giving you a hard time and who actually wants to have a productive conversation in these cases. One way to suss that out, according to Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor, is to ask, “How did you come to that opinion?” You can then gauge the response without judgment, and see whether it’s going to be productive. Note: People who are clearly set on provoking you or derailing normal conversation are called trolls and should always be ignored.

16. Tara Hunt, “Women, Technology and Social Capital.”

17. Barbara Glickstein, interview by author, September 14, 2009.

18. Allison Fine, interview by author, July 15, 2009.

19. “Perfectionism hits working women,” BBC News, May 28, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8072739.stm (accessed December 8, 2009).

20. Flaming: As discussed in chapter 4, flaming is the act of expressing extreme negative reactions online. It’s often instigated by trolls who are set off by seemingly insignificant indiscretions like typos, and who don’t have much else to do with themselves.

21. Kevin Marks, “How Twitter works in theory,” Epeus’ epigone, August 14, 2009, http://epeus.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-twitter-works-in-theory.html (accessed December 13, 2009).

22. Kit Eaton, “If You’re Applying for a Job, Censor Your Facebook Page,” FastCompany.com, August 19, 2009, http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/if-youre-applying-job-censor-your-facebook-page (accessed September 15, 2009).

23. Kristina Knight, “Nielsen: Personal recommendations ‘most trusted,’” BizReport, July 9, 2009, http://www.bizreport.com/2009/07/nielsen_personal_recommendations_most_trusted.html (accessed December 11, 2009).

24. Bruce Barry, interview by author, December 12, 2009.

25. Full disclosure, I’m happily on the board of ARC and am a huge fan of their work.

26. Rinku Sen, interview by author, August 13, 2009.

27. Wikipedia, “Homophily,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily (accessed September 15, 2009).

28. Shireen Mitchell, interview by author, July 8, 2009.

Conclusion

1. Wikipedia, “Semantic Web,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web (accessed December 2, 2009).

Resources

1. Or you’ve skipped ahead, you cheater.

2. A walled garden is a service that restricts its features and content to its own members. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden_%28technology%29.

3. Google Voice is a free Internet-based phone forwarding service that offers lots of features to help simplify your phone communications: http://google.com/voice/.

4. For more, check out Sam Anderson’s article “In Defense of Distraction,” New York, May 17, 2009, http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/.

5. Tara Hunt, interview by author, September 2, 2009.

6. Susan Mernit, “What is reputation grooming and how much time do you spend on it?” March 30, 2009, http://www.susanmernit.com/blog/2009/03/what-is-reputation-grooming-an.html (accessed September 15, 2009).

7. RSS: A format for storing online information in a way that makes that information readable by lots of different kinds of software. Many blogs and websites feature RSS feeds: constantly updated versions of the site’s latest content in a form that can be read by a newsreader. If you’re looking for a good newsreader, one place to start is with Google Reader (http://google.com/reader).

8. John Richardson, “Five Helpful Filters for Twitter Search,” Success Begins Today, August 2009, http://successbeginstoday.org/wordpress/2009/08/five-helpful-filters-for-twitter-search/ (accessed September 15, 2009).

9. Avinash Kaushik, on Twitter, March 2, 2009, http://twitter.com/avinashkaushik/status/1270289378.

10. Beth Kanter, “Hello, Washington Post: Dollars Per Facebook Donor Is Not the Right Metric for Success,” Beth’s Blog, April 22, 2009, http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/04/hello-washington-post-dolllars-per-facebook-donor-is-not-the-right-metric-for-success.html (accessed December 13, 2009).

11. Kety Esquivel, interview by author, August 24, 2009.

12. Allyson Kapin, “Where are the Women in Tech and Social Media?” Fast Company, August 10, 2009, http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/allyson-kapin/radical-tech/diversifying-your-rolodex (accessed December 13, 2009).

13. Evgeny Morozov, “From slacktivism to activism,” Foreign Policy, September 5, 2009, http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/09/05/from_slacktivism_to_activism (accessed on September 15, 2009).

14. Karlos Gauna Schmieder, interview by author, August 19, 2009.

15. Ellen Miller, “Wow! You Finished It Already!” Sunlight Foundation, October 8, 2006, http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2006/10/08/wow-you-finished-it-already/.

16. Wendy Werris, “No Advance, Author Turns To Fund-raising,” July 13, 2009, Publishers Weekly, http://www.sharethischange.com/pw.