Our reading this week outlines what is necessary to create an effective social system online: a promise, an effective tool, and an agreed-upon bargain. The promise is the common goal uniting the group, and the way it’s phrased can easily draw people in or turn them away. Many examples in the book involve focusing on creating something together rather than using something already there. This goal has to be something that people want to do, or they won’t think it a valuable use of their time. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a lofty goal, like the many examples of protests, etc. organized via the internet, but it must be something that its users/members see as valuable. The tool itself has to work for the group as well; too many bells and whistles can drive people away. That said, improvements can be made on a basic idea, especially if it will increase functionality and allow additional progress towards the initial promise or goal. The bargain in the cases of these groups is the set of rules (spoken or unspoken) which apply to the members; in example, on some forums it’s important to maintain a civil and polite tone, while on others people don’t care so much. As more and more groups and tools emerge to communicate with new technology, the potential for communication within a group increases exponentially.

Given the current situation in Egypt (referencing Twitter-driven pro-democracy protests were striking and are an example of how this tool has grown), I keep dwelling on how much we now rely on social networking tools to communicate. Earlier today I was trying to look up an article I’d read over break, but I couldn’t open the page because it was based in Egypt (.eg). The idea of the internet being completely shut down blows my mind, but the fact that Twitter and Facebook were the first sites the government blocked (the day before killing the entire internet) speaks to these sites’ importance in organizing protesters’ efforts. The epilogue goes on and on about China’s Great Firewall, which blocks Twitter now as well, if I recall correctly, and I think this censorship reinforces the message from Here Comes Everybody about the power that these online communities have.