Rheingold, H. (2000). The virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
This book explores the development of virtual communities from the 1960s to the 1990s using a journalistic style, full of anecdotes and personal observations about the growth of online social groups. The book is innovative in that it was one of the first studies of online communities before the growth of the Internet. The 2000 edition updates the original 1993 version with two additional chapters tracing subsequent developments. The book questions the distinction between 'virtual' communities and 'real-life' communities, arguing that real relationships and real communities develop online, with several examples of friendships, arguments, political organizing, and other relationships in the virtual world.