We Are the Nerds

The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory

De: Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

Narrado por: Chloe Cannon

Named a Best Book of 2018 by Fast Company, this is a "sharply written and brilliantly reported" (Shelf Awareness) look inside Reddit, the wildly popular, often misunderstood website that has changed the culture of the internet.

Reddit hails itself as "the front page of the Internet". It's the third-most visited website in the United States—and yet, millions of Americans have no idea what it is.

We Are the Nerds is an engrossing look deep inside this captivating, maddening enterprise, whose army of obsessed users have been credited with everything from solving cold-case crimes and spurring tens of millions of dollars in charitable donations to seeding alt-right fury and landing Donald Trump in the White House. We Are the Nerds is a gripping start-up narrative: the story of how Reddit's founders, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, rose up from their suburban childhoods to become millionaires and create an icon of the digital age—before seeing the site engulfed in controversies and nearly losing control of it for good.

Based on Christine Lagorio-Chafkin's exclusive access to founders Ohanian and Huffman, We Are the Nerds is also a compelling exploration of the way we all communicate today—and how we got here. Reddit and its users have become a mirror of the Internet: it has dingy corners, shiny memes, malicious trolls, and a sometimes heart-melting ability to connect people across cultures, oceans, and ideological divides.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2018 Christine Lagorio-Chafkin (P)2018 Hachette Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"This is the untold story of how one of the world's most popular websites was hatched—and how it took on a mind of its own. It's a gripping read, and it's full of lessons for building startups and organizing communities."—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals, Give and Take, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg

"We Are the Nerds is the best, grittiest, most accurate book yet about what it's like to build a startup and a community from scratch (a struggle I know well). And it's a great story; truly fun to read! Lagorio-Chafkin takes us back to a formative time for the modern web, helping us understand what can go wrong—and right!—when we try to harness the power of online community (and make money along the way)."—John Zeratsky, former design partner, Google Ventures, and New York Times bestselling author of Sprint and Make Time

"I've heard every start-up story you can imagine, but Reddit's is as fascinating as it gets. Christine has captured what it really looks like to start a company and turned Reddit's struggle for success into a gripping, entertaining book that is a must-read for every entrepreneur."—Daymond John, star of ABC's Shark Tank, bestselling author of Rise and Grind, and founder of FUBU

Blah

Just eh, another another story about nerdy white guys channelling their celibacy into a social media company.

NEWSPAPER'S FUTURE

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin offers a detailed history of the internet forum known as Reddit. Founded by Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanian, with coding help from Aaron Swartz in 2005, Reddit has grown from an idea to a user-based internet newspaper estimated at 57 million daily readers and users as of December 2022. Huffman and Ohanian were roommates and students at the University of Virginia. These two founders are helped by Aaron Swartz, a nerd coding extraordinaire, with coding expertise. These are early days of a yet to be named web site.

Reddit, like past and present newspaper and television stations are subject to their owner’s conservative, liberal, or independent biases. Owners of media sites like The New York Times, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Facebook, Google search, Microsoft search, and Amazon have their biases. Conscious management of deleterious and harmful content by news media is the hope of humanity’s future. That is the message one may find in Lagorio-Chafkin’s history of Reddit.

6 out of 5, better than not bad

I want to earn a PHD in modern American history just so I can make this book required reading for my students. Perfect mix of story telling and information. Will read anything else Cannon writes.

Good book, some slow parts

Great book overall with good storyline and characters. there are some slow parts that drag on a bit that are less interesting but overall an A plus

Interesting from start to finish

This book has great balance between covering the inner workings of the company and what happens in the communities. The narrator is engaging too.