Hey Arvind - thanks for commenting -- yeah, it's still very early days in our understanding of online communities -- and even earlier days in terms of businesses having any clue of how to interact with them effectively.

Per the title "Community Manager" -- you're right about the misleading connotations of "Manager" -- but then, job titles serve multiple purposes, so job titles are often rather laughable when read literally. I mean, my current job title is "Senior Director" which sounds like I'm either 80 yrs old, or running a old people's home.

Job titles serve as status signals to people within an industry -- certain words become seen as having a specific meaning within that industry -- so the companies really have to use those "code words" -- or their jobs get misunderstood, they attract the wrong kind of applicant, etc. So most companies are very unadventurous in how they do their job titles. The exceptions are the creative industries where creativity and uniqueness is expected.

For example: in the industries of banking and of market research, the title "Vice President" is a very common title. It is applied to many professionals who are considered seasoned or fully trained in that business -- you can easily become a VP before you're 30 yrs old, for example. But in Silicon Valley -- VP is only an executive level title -- there aren't many of them in any company. So the VP title signals different things in those different industries.

The job title "Manager" is often used to signal that the job is considered a "professional level" job for a person with some level of experience --it's not a job for a newbie -- and it's not an administrative-level job. Whereas if the job had the title "Community Coordinator" or something -- it might sound like a not-for-profit job, or more of an admin-level job. And we know the connotations (pro and con) of "Community Organizer", because of all the discussion around Obama's having had that job.

also note that inside organizations, job titles are tied to pay grades and rankings -- so "Manager" jobs across the company are linked to a salary range of $ to $$. Thus changing the title can cause confusion and put the salary level into question.

Thanks for reading and commenting! Yes, that's my feeling too -- that while there are differences in each online crowd action -- there are underlying common patterns.

There's been a lot of research done over the decades on the patterns of in-person crowd actions -- protests, riots, etc -- I hope some PhD student who's studying online behavior will do some more in-depth study of online crowd actions.

Good observations -- yup, mine was very much a first cut at a model / typography. As you say, there's a higher order of abstractions -- and there's a timeline for how the protest develops, that ties into the roles. And the roles interrelate, as you observe -- a single participant/post can serve the purpose of multiple roles.

I do hope somebody's doing serious research on this -- other than people like me, speculating in our spare time -- it's a rich topic, and there's plenty of data out there.

thanks for commenting!

Aha -- thanks for the heads up -- I'll check it. muchas gracias.

Hi Chris -- thanks for stopping by and commenting! (and thanks for the Digg!)

Your book list is excellent -- wonderful set of thinkers/writers.

Per your comment about Snow Crash and Second Life -- apparently SF and the real world have been mutually influencing each other since back in the 19th century. The book "Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science" by Brake & Hook gave some interesting examples.

Hi Gordon -- glad the list was useful -- thanks for letting me know!

Aha great minds think alike -- that's the book a friend of mine recommended to me awhile back, and he suggested it for this list too (Paul Henderson -- a brilliant guy, does business strategy and IP consulting, and reads an enormous range of books, including a lot of SF -- you can find him on LinkedIn).

Just like you mention though -- I was worried that the later parts of the book would lose people. Again I was trying to pick books that were super accessible to non SF readers and that stayed pretty close to today's world.

Actually now that you mention Stross, Halting State would have been a pretty good one for the original post...shoulda had that one in there....

Hi Caspar - hmm that's a great suggestion -- it didn't occur to me but of course the Amazon links would be country-specific. I'll look into how to do the UK links.

But in the meantime, don't hold off buying books. Thanks so much for thinking of my affiliate money but no reason to hold off.

(also -- some additional good books were mentioned in the comments, so definitely check the other comments if you're thinking about buying something).

Thanks for the suggestions! I had actually thought about Doctorow's Little Brother for the post.:-) I'm not familiar w/ the Global Frequency series, though, I'll have to check it out.

Yeah, my name is pretty common (Mary not Mark :-P ) My email is mary at interwalk dot com -- that may help you find me on FB. FB interface can be annoying -- I clicked on all 5 Alison Lowndes and each one says they have to confirm me before it gives me access to anything...