

Social Software and the Politics of Groups (2003) - Snail_Commando
http://shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html

======
vitovito
After this, he gave a much longer, more detailed talk about social software
and small group theory, "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy":
[http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html)

The talk is an accurate and accessible adaptation of 50 years of sociological
research by Bion and others in "small group research" and "group dynamics."

If this sort of thing interests you, you might also like social interaction
designer Xianhang Zhang's compelling anecdotes:
[http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-
sundays-2-the-...](http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-
sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/)

And my own essay on the Austin design community, with hypotheses about how
communities work at the end: [http://distance.cc/issues/01/01c-Vitorio-
Miliano.html](http://distance.cc/issues/01/01c-Vitorio-Miliano.html)

There are about 150 footnotes in the essay, but I pulled out all the
references into a separate PDF, and linked to all of the papers and talks that
are available online or out-of-copyright, which would be a good starter kit
for anyone looking to do social software correctly:
[http://distance.cc/issues/01/vitorio-
colophon.pdf](http://distance.cc/issues/01/vitorio-colophon.pdf)

( I follow up that essay with another one, talking about professionalism in
design and the future of design practices, and Distance is on clearance now
for $5 if you want to read it: [http://distance.cc/](http://distance.cc/) )

After I wrote my essay, a couple scholars produced a book called "Successful
Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design." I haven't read it cover-to-
cover, but the parts I did read were very good, lots of well-researched advice
for new social systems.
[http://successfulonlinecommunities.com/](http://successfulonlinecommunities.com/)

