A 150-person San Francisco community disproportionately seeded the early web industry

Evidence

In some ways, the project succeeded. The Cyborganic apartments on Ramona hosted weekly Thursday night dinners and became a central meeting space for up-and-coming digerati. Cool estimates that the extended Cyborganic community at the time comprised 100 to 150 people, with a disproportionately significant influence on San Francisco’s technology scene. Cyborganic members worked at Wired and its online offshoot HotWired; founded Organic.com, C|Net, ChickClick, and a variety of other startups; and contributed to high-profile open-source projects like Apache. Justin Hall of links.net, often cited as the first blogger, was a member. Cyborganic was written up in Wired and Rolling Stone, which described the community as “ground zero in the information revolution. This is the spawning ground for Webheads, geeks, pagan rituals and creative anarchy. This is where the future is being born, mutating and replicating in every pixeled-out, sugar-fueled twenty-something brain.” — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 133

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s influencer-culture work: this tiny dense network that produced disproportionate influence is a precursor to later Silicon Valley network effects and the idea that small scenes birth major industries. — connects to: A tiny 150-person community disproportionately created Silicon Valley’s early web culture — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 133; Twitter’s early user base was a small San Francisco tech clique — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 207

Broader Connections

• A tiny 150-person community disproportionately created Silicon Valley’s early web culture #corroborates (1.00) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 133
• Twitter’s early user base was a small San Francisco tech clique #qualifies (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 207