“Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.”

“Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group.”

“Tools that provide simple ways of creating groups lead to new groups, [...] and not just more groups but more kinds of groups.”

“The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming 'gather, then share' into 'share, then gather'.”

“The low cost of aggregating information also allowed the formalization of sharing [...].”

“The centrality of group effort to human life means that anything that changes the way groups function will have profound ramifications for everything from commerce and government to media and religion.”

“[N]ew technology enables new kinds of group-forming.”