Group Conversations: A Taxonomy

Over the weekend, I listened to a talk given by Clay Shirky about his new book "Here Comes Everybody."

As a sucker for taxonomies, I found his taxonomy of group conversations interesting:

• Sharing - post stuff you find interesting
• Conversations - sounded like CoPs to me...no roles/responsibilities & revolves around a shared interest
• Collaboration - sounded like CoIs to me...roles/responsibilities & has a specific goal
• Collective Action - focused on near-term action...roles/responsibilities are often fluid and the goal is very specific and often time-sensitive

As you move from Sharing toward Collective Action, there's an increasing level of synchronization (shades of Figure 5 of "The Implementation of Network Centric Warfare").

I liked his "every URL is a latent community" (my paraphrase)...very RESTful.

Here's a good summary.