Stacy Horn founded EchoNYC, a New York CityInternet salon, in 1990, whose members are called Echoids. The WELL, one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation, was an influence. Horn later decided that Echo stood for "East Coast Hang Out". Horn saw the Echo bulletin board system as a place where conversation could revolve around literature, film, culture, and sex, rather than the more pervasive topics of computer technology at the time. Originally run out of Horn's apartment in Greenwich Village in her spare time, Echo rapidly expanded its membership, and eventually consumed every free phone line in her Greenwich Village neighborhood, requiring New York Telephone to run a separate cable to Horn's apartment. In 1990, Echo became a company with a core group of members chosen by Horn for their "strong on-line personalities", who were responsible for creating enticing discussions to attract users.
Books
Her first book, Cyberville: Clicks, Culture and the Creation of an Online Town, describes the community that formed on Echo, the problems Horn encountered as Echo's final authority, and her observations about the nature of the virtual world. Through the 90s, she was often profiled and quoted in articles about life and business on the internet. Her book is still used in courses on the sociology of virtual communities. The publication of her second book, Waiting For My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir, a memoir about her midlife crisis, revealing an unusual fascination with death, coincided with a series of commentaries for the NPR's All Things Considered on the same subject. Her third book, The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad, recounts the stories of four of New York's cold cases and profiles the detectives who investigate them. Her fourth book, Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena, from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, was published in 2009. Her fifth book is about singing. It is titled Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing With Others, and it was published by Algonquin Books in 2013. Her next book, titled Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York, is about Blackwell's Island and was also published by Algonquin Books in May, 2018.
