Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 15, 2008 – 8:40 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Advertising 2.0 written by Tracy Tuten, Twitter Revolution written by Warren Whitlock and Managing Online Forums written by Patrick O’Keefe.
Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
Books on Web 2.0, Social Media, the Live Web or whatever you may call it are released on a near daily basis. I’ve read many of them and really get the feeling I get the hang of it. It feels like I’ve read it all before… So I am done with the books who describe the übertrends and explain what is happining. I’m in search of books who explain me how to take benefit of everything 2.0. Books who show me the money! With unexpected cases, a niche subject and clear guidelines on how to approach the topic. I’ve found much of this in Advertising 2.0: social media marketing in a Web 2.0 world, written by Associate Prosser at Longwood University Tracy Tuten. Next to the more well known cases, you’ll will also find cases on Nine Inch Nails, Audi, 42 Entertainment, Vodaphone and Leo Burnett. In advertising 2.0 Tuten describes the advertising, branding, and marketing opportunities available so that advertisers and content publishers can take benefit of the Web 2.0 world.
Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online
A book with Twitter in it’s title. Gotta read that! I wonder if there has ever been a (online) phenomenon that got so much traction as Twitter got in the last two years with all its press coverage, third party applications and wide spread adoption (if so please help me :-)). Author Warren Whitlock must have thought the same when he decided to write Twitter Revolution: How social media and mobile marketing is changing the way we do business & market online. A book on how YOU can take benefit of the fastest growing social networking revolution in years. So if you ever need a book to get the hang of Twitter and it’s spin-offs, understand their value, get the most out of the services or convince your superiors why you should have a Twitter like service within your enterprise? Read Twitter Revolution.
Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards
I’ve been working on some smaller and larger scale online communities lately and one of the things I had trouble with explaining to my customers is online community management. I know it’s essential in developing successful online communities and the cases of organizations applying online community management are countless. But what do you do exactly? What types of people do you need, what are their tasks, how do you deal with Legal constraints, trolls, technical issues and the like? I’ve found much of the answers in Managing Online Forums: everything you need to know to create and run succesful community discussion boards written by (amazingly) 23 year old Patrick O’Keefe. O’Keefe describes all aspects of online community management from setting up the right organizational structure, promoting and attracting members, choosing and managing moderators to generating revenue. I believe Managing online forums is a must read for everyone who is slightly involved in setting up successful social sites.
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Written on October 30, 2008 – 2:24 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When I received an email from Alard Weisscher, saying he’s working on a lifestream project, my first reaction was something like: “not another one”. And yes, when I browsed storytlr and clicked on one of the showcased lifestreams - it looked rather standard. Well, just the lifestream bit, because the rest of the site looked rather smashing (see picture).
So much for the standard lifestream part. Apart from Storytlr’s basic lifestream service, they also offer a “story” feature. This is a cool and different visual approach to lifestreams. Imagine you go on a hiking trip, somewhere in the United Kingdom. You tweet, you make photos, and you film. Nice to combine that in a book-like concept, right? This is what Belgian-based storytlr makes of it:
Now all they need is a partnership with Blurb and the lifestream-book circle will be complete.
Written on October 29, 2008 – 9:30 am
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
The answer is 236. I’m one of 237 authors who have contributed to the publication ‘Age of Conversation 2 - Why don’t they get it?‘ and I’m very happy to announce that you can buy the book from 08:00 US EST today, 29th October 2008 here - http://www.lulu.com/ageofconversation. For those of you in the UK, that’s on sale from 12 Noon today, 13:00 in Netherlands, France, Spain etc.
The publication is a series of themed short essays, involving 237 marketing professionals who blog from 29 states throughout the USA, and from 14 other nations from Australia to the Ukraine. All contributed one page — 400 words — on the topic of “conversation”.
My contribution to ‘AOC2′ was a chapter entitled “You’re a facilitator, not a creative…” in the section of the book called ‘A New Brand of Creative’.
“I can think at about 1250 words per minute, but can only speak at about 250wpm. So I am five times more clever when I keep my mouth shut…” - David Petherick, writing in Age of Conversation 2
There are two important things to note: 1) You can get it in hardback, or in paperback or in e-book format and 2) All the proceeds go to the International children’s charity, Variety. Not one of the authors receives a complimentary copy - we have to buy ours too. The authors are aiming to raise $15,000 for the charity - if you order a copy, add your name below in the comments, and I’ll send you a special extra gift to say thanks.
So if you’d like an autographed or personalised copy, or a review copy - then buy it, ship it to me, and I’ll send it on - my contact details are here. It would be quite a feat to get all 237 authors to sign it - any ideas on how to do that ‘2.0 style’?
Full list of authors is here. Good old fashioned press release is here.
Written on October 13, 2008 – 10:28 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing planet Google written by Randall Stross, Born Digital written by John palfrey and Urs Gasser and Click here to order written by Joel Comm.
Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan To Organize Everything We Know
We live in difficult times. The financial crisis seems to kill every innovative concept, Techcrunch declares Web 2.0 dead and Sequoia says RIP to good times… Fortunately, there is Google who helps us to make sense of all the information that is floating around us and who is constantly evolving to offer us more services to organize our information needs. Now New York Times columnist Randall Stross wrote down the entire Google story in Planet Google - One Company’s audacious plan to organize everything we know: from it’s initial launch, its struggles to come up with a viable business model and its recent attempts to take over the Office Suite market. Planet Google is a simple, pragmatic but well written insight in Googleplex. Unfortunately the book does not offer too much depth like the implications of a world of ‘perfect knowledge‘ in which Google introduced us. But I guess we will leave that to another book.
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
Much is written about generation Y, generation Einstein (in Dutch) and the impact of growing up in a digital world but few wrote it down so well as John Palfrey and Urs Gasser did in Born Digital - Understanding the first generation of digital natives. Born Digital is the result of a digital natives research project and describes the issues surrounding digital natives and their extensive use of digital resources, the Internet and social networks. It deals with issues around privacy, safety, learning, intellectual property and media creation. This is not a technology oriented book. Rather it approaches the topic from a sociologic perspective which makes it, in my perspective, rather interesting. It seems that the book mainly focuses on parents, adults and policy makers who are trying to understand the implications of what is going on but it’s also an interesting read for the more technology savvy people.
Click Here to Order: Stories of the World’s Most Successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs
I love Joel Comm’s tagline on his website: Make Money online. In the end that’s what it all comes down to right? Now Comm published a book that should help you achieving just that by giving you a sneak peek in the world of the world’s most successful internet marketing entrepreneurs. The book is packed with inspiring and fast-paced stories on real success stories and gives you some usefull insights and tactics on how to achieve the same results with your own initiatives. Click here to order is entertaining, a nice read!
Written on August 14, 2008 – 10:36 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. It’s obviously ‘komkommertijd’ as it seems that not much relevant reading material reaches us these months (please correct me if I’m wrong in the comments). Therefore, we discuss one new release, one upcoming release and an oldy in a new jacket. This month we’re discussing Tribes by Seth Godin, Blown to Bits by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.
Tribes: We Need You
The fact that I’m covering a book that is set to be published in October says it all… Can I consider myself part of the Seth Godin tribe? I think probably not, but this line seems to cover his entire book. According to Seth Godin Tribes are “groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have.” Think Apple, Nelson Mandela, God. Probably Godin’s next bestseller and not to be missed…
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion
Blown to Bits (not to be confused with Blown to bits), written by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis, is a book in line with the Future of the Internet. The book seeks answers to questions the information age draws upon us and claims to give us the knowledge we need to help shape our own digital future. All written from an MIT / Harvard perspective. The book not only describes 10 truths about digital data it also describes the implications of choices our governments are making right now. The book got some outstanding appraisal from among others Lawrence Lessig and David Weinberger.
The Long Tail, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
The Long Tail, written by Chris Anderson is probably one of the most popular books of our culture. Despite some recent critique on the Long Tail and an extensive wikipedia entry that does a great job in investigating it’s relevance and statistical meaning, the book still holds a lot of value. The book describes how the digitization has transformed the future of commerce and culture from a hit driven economy, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, into an endlessly long tail economy. His revised and updated edition adds a new chapter about Long Tail Marketing and a new epilogue, which makes it even more worthwhile to read. A must own for the true fans.
Written on August 13, 2008 – 10:22 am
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
The European Commission has put a boatload of extra cash into Europeana, an ambitious project to digitize Europe’s cultural heritage for generations to come. The 120 million euro it will be investing in 2009-2010 will prove to be insufficient, so they’re calling on all member states in the European Union to reach for their (public and private) pockets and raise some more funds.
“The European Digital Library will be a quick and easy way for people to access European books and art – whether in their home country or abroad. It will, for example, enable a Czech student to browse the British library without going to London, or an Irish art lover to get close to the Mona Lisa without queuing at the Louvre,” said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media. “However, even though Member States have made significant progress in making cultural content accessible on the Internet, more public and private investment is needed to speed up digitisation.”
Europeana should become open to the public by the end of this year, although the project has been running for a number of years already. The portal’s demonstration site went live earlier this year as a showcase for organizations interested in submitting digital content.
Libraries in EU countries contain more than 2.5 billion books. But only about 1 % of archival material is available in digital form. The total cost of digitizing 5 million books is already estimated at approximately 225 million euros, not including objects like manuscripts or paintings. Europeana will also make music, photographs, and films digitally available in one portal.
Instead of being cynical about this, I’m going to hope for a great outcome for the project!
Written on July 16, 2008 – 2:09 pm
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Once you’re lucky, twice you’re good by Sarah Lazy, The future of the internet and how to stop it by Jonathan Zittrain, and iPhone: the missing manual by David Pogue,
Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0
Every once in a while a book is released that describes the history of “our” industry: the rise, the fall and again the rise of the web economy. Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, written by Sarah lazy, is such a book. Lazy describes the burst of the first dot com bubble in 2000 and the resurrection of the industry by telling the stories of the entrepreneurs who invented the web companies that bring us Web 2.0 today. Expect stories from Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Six Apart, Slide, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ning, and more.
The book has the same vibe as the best sellers describing the Apple and Steve Jobs success stories so it’s definitely worth a read.
The Future of the Internet and how to stop it
I’ve watched some parts of the (not so short) presentation about The Future of the Internet and how to stop it, written by Jonathan Zittrain, thanks to Dutch marketing expert Marco Derksen and it looks quite amazing. Zittrain’s point is that the success off the Internet as we know it is bound to come to end due to the exact same characteristics (open innovation) that made it a success in the first place. We are moving towards a lock down of the Internet through proprietary platforms like iPods, iPhones, X-Box’s, GPS and more. To quote from it’s website “[The Future of the Internet] shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.” This book is worth your time when you’re interested in a vision on future developments of the Internet.
iPhone: The Missing Manual
Now we can all enjoy the benefits of having a brand new shiny iPhone the first thing we need to do is find ways to get the most out of this little machine, cause we need to justify our investment (ahum…). iPhone: the missing manual, written by David Pogue will get you quickly up to speed on how you get the most out of the hardware, software and interface of the iPhone. Together with Andy Ihnatko’s iPhone Fully loaded you are bound to become a true iPhone hero in no time. Nothing much more to say here…
Written on June 8, 2008 – 8:00 pm
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Groundswell by Charlene Li, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide by Amy Shuen, and Designing for the Social Web by Joshua Porter.
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
It’s a great time for people who want to read social media and web strategy in general. Many books are released each month and to find the books that are worth your time gets harder and harder. Groundswell, a book written by Forrester Analist Charlene Li, seems to be such a book. As we know from Forrester, the book is full of hard analytic data to back up your social media strategy building thingy. The book provides many case studies (also ones we haven’t heard of yet), strategy roadmap development and a profile tool to map your (potential) customers with three general criteria on six overlapping levels of participation to find how to best interact with them.
Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations.
Let’s face it: while we all can’t stop raving about the beauty of social media and Web 2.0, we are still not very good in monetizing this trend other than by selling ads or making a smashing IPO. Web 2.0: A strategy Guide, written by Amy Shuen (she’s publishing parts of her book on her weblog), tries to help us with this part by talking about Web 2.0 from a strategy perspective, the major Web 2.0 concepts and it’s effects (not technologies) and real life cases as Flickr, Google and Amazon. This book tries to bridge the gap between the yet relatively limited knowledge of business people on Web 2.0 so perhaps it’s not a book for early adopters as we might all be. But when you are in business, looking for a strategy book on Web 2.0 this might be the one you are looking for.
Designing for the Social Web
I’ve read an interesting review of Designing for the Social Web, written by Joshua Porter, on the blog of Web Worker Daily. They put it nicely: this book is about designing social sites from a higher level view of the process, which makes it more relevant than perhaps yet another book about building rails applications. We all know that the social web requires a different perspective on principles like designing for conversations for example and Porter outlines this nicely in this book. He talks about the usage lifecycle, users intrinsic motivations for participating on your site, getting users on your site, analytics and more. Definitely a must read for all social designers among us.
Written on May 12, 2008 – 11:47 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Me the Media by Jaap Bloem, Menno van Doorn and Sander Duivestein, Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen and Microsoft 2.0 by Mary Jo Foley.
Me the Media - Past, Present and Future of the Third Media Revolution
Only once in a while a book is released in the Netherlands that has international potential. I think Me the Media, written by Jaap Bloem, Menno van Doorn and Sander Duivestein is such a book. Currently only available in Dutch but the book is being translated to English so put it on your watch list! Me the Media deals with the impact of web media on “hyper-individualization, ICTainment on top of ICTechnology, and of meaningful web conversations between organizations, customers and employees”.
The authors knows how to eat their own dogfood, since they launched a website, a weblog, a wiki and an exciting video channel on youtube about their book. Definitely worth a watch! Oh and if you are curious about the book itself? Feel free to read the outlines of the chapters online. for Dutch readers, entire chapters are available as PDF download.
Google Apps Hacks
It’s no surprise that Google seems to be seriously hammering Microsoft and it’s office suite by offering a less complex, less expensive and easier to use (my opinion :)) office platform. Even I use Google Docs and spreadsheets more and more with my colleagues although my employee provides me with a well-thought, ubiquitous Microsoft platform. Google Apps Hacks, written by Philipp Lenssen (famous guy behind Google Blogoscoped!), describes a whole bunch of clever hacks, workarounds, and other undocumented tips that help you get the most out of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and other Google applications. After you read this book you will see how big the Google Universe really is.
Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era
Google Apps Hacks describes how you can benefit from the entire Google suite and makes you wonder how Microsoft will deal with these kinds of competition. At the same time we all know that Microsoft is working his ass off to stay relevant in the post-desktop, Internet era. Personally I’m extremely curious about how Microsoft will evolve the coming years since they have the appearances against them (Microsoft Bashing anyone?). So Microsoft 2.0, written by Mary Jo Foley (an American journalist, blogger for Zdnet and Microsoft analyst), is a great way to get a sneak peek into Microsoft’s future. For this book Foley interviewed many executives, partners, customers and competitors so she was able to write down a comprehensive picture of the company’s future. Foley offers insights into the people, products and strategies that will be key for the Microsoft in the next decade(s).
Written on May 4, 2008 – 1:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
It’s Sunday afternoon, why wouldn’t I cover another Twitter application? Especially since this one actually seems pretty useful. It’s called Bkkeepr and helps you to keep track of the books you read. Although statistics show that the number of people reading books is falling drastically, web professionals generally like to read a book or two. This blog even has a monthly Booklist 2.0 series by Martin Kloos.
Tracking the books you read has always been a popular activity. Amazon has some tools for it and Blippr partly revolves around updating your digital bookshelf. First of all, you probably like to show off a bit with your amazing list of classical masterpieces. Moreover, your book collection says something about you.
So it’s good news that somebody has created a simple way of tracking the books you’ve read. For now, it’s in some sort of stealth beta but after a while, it’s just a matter of sending the ISBN number to @bkkeepr. Also, you can post status updates about the page number you’ve reached and ‘bookmark’ your favorite parts in the book. So long for dog ears…
Bkkeepr is a project of booktwo.org. A blog by James Bridle that exists to “report, catalogue, investigate, stimulate and debate the future of literature”.
Oh and for the showing off part? Bkkeepr offers a widget too…
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
