Other social news sites, such as reddit and Digg, take a similar democratic approach, the latter recently climbing into the top 100 visited web sites in the world, having launched just over two years ago.

Music, too, has become subject to the power of collaboration. Web sites like MacJams.com and iCompositions.com encourage musicians to work together, and they do. "Virtual bands" put out classified ads on discussion forums that seek

instrumentalists or vocalists, and once assembled, the individual band members record their contributions and pass them on to the next member, who oftentimes lives in a different state or country. Once every band member has contributed, the tracks are combined to create one coherent song. In many cases, it's hard to believe that the virtual band musicians didn't record together in the same studio.

Outside the realm of academia, social networking is providing the glue to hold collaborative creation processes together.

People who write, or play music, or report news in these environments have incentive to produce good work. Should they fail to do so, their work will fall into obscurity. At Newsvine, writers who generate lots of comments (read: lots of discussion) have their subsequent articles published to more prominent places on the web site, like the front page, where they share the spotlight with major national and international news stories.

At MacJams, good songs get similar treatment.