What

• group: a number of people in persistent inter-communication
• persistence might be for a day or two, or 20 years
• common interests vs. common temperment
• group-forming: organized by members
• ridiculously easy: so easy it happens without thinking about it

Examples

• Reply-all function in email
• Interconnected Weblog comments
• "what happens when everyone is empowered to create open channels where any blogger can contribute content" - Seb
• eBay auction
• wiki
• MeetUp, MoveOn, Dean campaign
• IM buddy list
• LinkedIn, Tribe.net, Friendster, Flickr, orkut

Why

• How do groups and networks differ?
• Sarnoff's Law: N audience members
• Metcalfe's Law: N^2 possible connections
• Reed's Law: 2^N possible groups
• Reed's Law -- An Interview by David Weinberger
• David Reed's Group Forming Networks Resource Page

Issues

• What technologies help, and why?
• What technologies don't help, and why?
• To what extent do webloggers and internet diarists actually care to commune with others, and in what ways?
• What specifically about weblogging makes the pasttime uniquely conducive to group forming and collaboration?
• What are the latest key platform initiatives in this area?
• What are the latest key standards initiatives in this area?
• What are the success/business metrics that are of most interest to businesses?
• Who are the intended beneficiaries in the evolution of the concept: project teams, families, classrooms, interest groups?
• Who might get left out?
• "Everyone" can be a highly consequential word on the Internet. How can we prevent/control exploitation by spammers?
• How do groups decide what they want to do?
• How do you find people you'd like, either in interest or temperment?
• danah: "It's tricky... how do you create an environment that invites all of the people you want in your community and keeps out all of the people you don't want?"