Uncovering the History of the Social Internet

This week’s episode of Vice New’s Cyber podcast featured an an interesting interview with Taylor Lorenz about her new book Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.

Whereas other books on Internet history tend to focus on the pre-social media era of the 1990s, this book starts with blogs and moves into the era of social media. Based on the interview on Cyber, this will be a very interesting book both for those who lived through the era online and those (like myself) who largely sat on the sidelines being confused by what was happening. Whether you participated or not, this history has had a large influence on contemporary media and the rise of what one might called the influencer economy.

I recommend the listening to the interview and I’ll certainly be checking out the book once it is released.