As to books about online communities. Your observation about the gap is astute and the gap is there for a reason. If you look at the cycles of attention around online community you have the first significant rise after the publication of Howard Rheingolds “Virtual Community: Homesteading…” (By the way, the full text is available free online, thanks to Howard)

Then we had a few more great offerings from Amy Jo Kim, Cliff Figallo and Jenny Preece. There is also an excellent edited book by Smith and Kollock “Communities in Cyberspace.” They and Preece, I think, opened the door to academic interest and study of online communities.

From this initial start there were some other books, mostly aimed at what we now know were naive expectations about early forms of online communities for business application. There was a lot of hoopla.

THEN came the dotcom crash. “Build it and they will come” was realized as a pipe dream. And the interest in online communities subsided. (And I’d say for more than economic reasons – the limitations of software, the adoption rates for going online, etc.)

With the emergence of what we now call “Web2.0″ and “social media” (which, by the way, have their roots back into the 60′s and the history is a VERY fascinating online community and network story unto itself and an example of the interplay between technology and community – we explore it a bit in the start of Digital Habitats), and the increase use of the internet, another wave of “online community” emerged. This one was more diverse.

There was the “online community” associated with buying things prompted by the longevity and success of Amazon (ratings) and eBay (reputation) and more sophisticated applications that allowed businesses to tap into the people side of retail.

There was the “online community” associated with social networks. Here is where I’d say this is not online community and that the differentiation – or more accurately, the continuum between individual, community and network — really started to emerge. I’ve been writing a lot about this continuum on my blog and in my slide decks (choconancy) if you are interested. I won’t bore you now.

This has, in my mind, not only extended the possibilities of how we interact together online for a purpose, but also diversified design and facilitation approaches – something I don’t think books are addressing. You find this juicy stuff these days in Twitter chats with the #KMers and #lrnchat and others. It is still a distributed discourse – which is both fascinating and time consuming.

If you want to see some of the other books I’ve find useful, you can find them here: http://astore.amazon.com/fullcircleassoci?_encoding=UTF8&node=0

I bet you’re talking about the Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Jonathan, and I would have definitely had it as a reading in the class, though we would have needed more recent books on the subject too. I found a weird hole with books published about online communities. There was a lot from 1995-2001, and then almost nothing between that time and now. Fortunately, Nancy White’s new book looks really awesome, so maybe we’ll see a rebirth of books on this subject matter.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0749395001/associatizer-20/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262681218/associatizer-20/

Whichever one I read, at the time it was published, it was a revelation to me. I have no idea how well in general it would hold up now 15 years later, might not serve your purposes well since it’s about online communities using technology of 15 years old, but probably still interesting in a sort of anthropological way.