'Revisiting Virtual Communities: The Internet's Impact on Society and Politics'

Today, I’m at The Internet East and West: How Digital Technology is Transforming China and the nitd States at the Univrsity of California at Berkeley.
The first panel today, Revisiting Virtual Communities: the Internet’s Impact on Society and Politics, is underway.

Susan Mernit> of Five Consultancy and author of Navigating the Info Jungle weblog predicts that within a year the number of people who join online commuinties (Orkut, Friendster, etc.) as the numbrof peope who have today purchased anything online.

Craig Newmark of the eponymous Craig List describes his service and how it was based upon his observations of online communities such as The WELL.

Mark Pincus , CEO of Tribe Networks, explains that his company’s service facilitates online formation of affinity groups.

Marks Moulitsas Zuniga the Daily Kos weblog, talks abouthowblogs and e-mail publishing to online cmmunities strengthened both the John Kerry and Howard Dean presidential campaigns this year. He said that tradtionall campaign methods such as ‘attack ads’, atempt to prevent people from grouping behind a candidate, but that the new methods he describes do the opposite.

What We Do

Since 1996, the media business consulting firm of Digital Deliverance has provided publishers and broadcasters on four continents with strategic reviews and advice about how to profitably adapt to the epochal changes that computer-mediated technologies have wrought on the media environment and their industries.

Over the years, the firm’s clients have include The New York Times, News Corporation, The Irish Times of Dublin, Dagbladet of Oslo, The Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, Advance Publications, Critical Mention, MediaNews Group, New Century Network, the Media Development Investment Fund, the National Cancer Institutes, and scores of other media firms that need to adapt to computer-mediated technologies and the rise of Individuated Media.

The managing partner of Digital Deliverance is Vin Crosbie, Adjunct Professor of postgraduate New Media Management at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication, in upstate New York. From 2007 through 2020, he wrote and was the sole instructor of the school’s New Media Business course, a course required for students in the New Media Management master’s degree curriculuum, an elective course for Ph.D. students, and a permission-only course for selected undergraduates and graduate students.

Digital Deliverance is incorporated as a limited liability company in the U.S. state of Connecticut, where it is based in the city of Norwich, Connecticut.