His novels are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards.His latest novel is Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and his latest short story collection is Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present.

He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc, Stikkit, Annenberg Center for the Study of Online Communities, SiteShuffle, and Onion Networks, Inc. In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, "The William Gibson of his generation." He was also named one of Forbes Magazine's 2007 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2007.