Zandt - Share this! how you will change the world with social networking

More Praise for Share This!

Deanna Zandt has a techies brain and an organizers heart. With this book, she shows us definitively (and entertainingly too) how our personal stories can do more than fill out our consumer profile. Together, they say, we can change the world. Deanna shows us how we can come together in a whole new way, right now.

Laura Flanders, host of GRITtv and GRITradio and author of Blue Grit

Greedheads and boneheads, arrogance and ignorance. Can everyday people buck the system? Yes! Zandt shows us how, and how to have fun doing it!

Jim Hightower, national radio commentator and author of Swim Against the Current

Share This! is the book I wish I had written. Zandt writes with incredible knowledge, easy humor, and profoundly touching stories. If ever you needed that nudge to convince you that the web has fundamentally changed the game and that your participation is an important part of it, this is the book. Im recommending it to everyone I know.

Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor

Progressive media activist and geek grrl Deanna Zandt has been surfing the social media wave practically from the start. Whether youre looking to get your feet wet or want to dive in, Share This! shows not only how networked media is changing society but how we all can join in and make the most of it to help change the world.

Micah Sifry, cofounder, Personal Democracy Forum, and Editor, TechPresident.com

Youve never read a book like this before. Embrace the new. Go for it. It just might change your life.

Don Hazen, Executive Editor, AlterNet.org

Sick of hearing about how social media is changing everything? Deanna Zandt knows what you meanand yet shes found a way to transcend the cynicism and remind us that beneath the hype, something amazing is happening as we build our digital lives around what still matters most: relationships.

Monika Bauerlein, Coeditor, Mother Jones

Share This! is a book that everyone from tech novices to old hands will enjoy. Zandt hits just the right note with her accessible and witty prosethis book is bound to change the way you think about social networking.

Jessica Valenti, founder, Feministing.com , and author of The Purity Myth

Deanna Zandt is completely tapped into the social media matrix. Every activist working in the digital space needs this book.

Latoya Peterson, Editor, Racialicious.com

After my daughter explained Facebook to me, I joined. (And surprised many of my friends!)

Rachael Zandt, Administrative Assistant, Columbian Financial Group, and mother, Deanna Zandt

Zandts book is like a celebrity cooking showit breaks down the ingredients of social media successes into basic and easy-to-understand ingredients. You will finish reading this manual with the amazing feeling of I can do this!

Scott Goodstein, External Online Director, Obama for America, and founder, Revolution Messaging

Deanna Zandt is one of the smartest, savviest, and sharpest observers of the new world, new media, and new ideas.

Robert Greenwald, President, Brave New Films

With media, technology, and politics having essentially merged, all activists for justice need to update their attitudes and their skills. This book by social media maven Deanna Zandt has just the right mix of the why and the how to convince the skeptical and equip the fearful.

Rinku Sen, Executive Director, Applied Research Center, and coauthor of The Accidental American

Deanna Zandt thinks big, arguing that social media wont just change how we talk but how we live. Part analysis, part guidebook, Share This! offers a creative, ambitious view of a truly organic political landscape hinted at, but never really pursued, by the new political establishment.

Ben Smith, Senior Political Writer, Politico

Share This! combines common sense, technically savvy how-to, and a grasp of the way in which human beings and technology come together and sometimes apart. Deanna Zandt is a first-rate guide for the 22nd century.

Amy Bloom, author of Where the God of Love Hangs Out and Away

How You Will Change the World with Social Networking

Deanna Zandt

Share This!

Copyright 2010 by Deanna Zandt
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650
San Francisco, California 94104-2916
Tel: (415) 288-0260, Fax: (415) 362-2512
www.bkconnection.com

Ordering information for print editions
Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.
Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com
Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.
Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: (800) 509-4887; Fax: (800) 838-1149; E-mail: customer.service@ingrampublisherservices.com; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com /Ordering for details about electronic ordering.

Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

First Edition
Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60509-416-8
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-417-5
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-837-1

2010-1

Cover art and design: Randi Hazan
Author photo: Parris Whittingham
Copyeditor: Elissa Rabellino
Production, interior design, and composition: Leigh McLellan Design

for my mom, Rachael

HEY! YOU. Yes, you, right there. Did you know that posting what you had for breakfast, offering advice about parenting, and posting links to news stories you find interesting all have the potential to radically change the world?

No?

Then this book is for you.

Social networking is all the rage, and its coming at us, a million miles an hour. Were surrounded by a flurry of new technology, and just when we begin to make sense of one tool, a new one arrives on the scene. (At the time of this writing, we are predominantly using what you out there in The Future may remember as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace.)

All this activity leaves us little time to contemplate any forest for all these trees, let alone think about the bigger picture of how this technology will change the future. But heres the secret: How we share information, find community, and both connect and disconnect will give us unprecedented influence over our place in the world. Social media technology holds some of the biggest potential for creating tectonic shifts in how we operate, and the overall open-ended promise of technology gives us a great shot at creating the systems for change. Technology isnt a magic bullet for solving the worlds problems, but its certainly a spark to the fastest fuse to explode our notions of power that the world has seen in a thousand years. In this book, I hope to show you how to light that fuse.