This article was published on March 9, 2008

BookList2.0: March 2008


BookList2.0: March 2008

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 The Age of Engage by Denise Shiffman, Pirate’s Dilemma by Mat Mason and Web 2.0 patterns by Duane Nickull et al.

The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today’s Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture

the Age of EngageJust of the presses The Age of Engage, written by Denise Shiffman deals with the premise that web 2.0 is reshaping marketing into a field where companies should truly engage their audiences in order to become successful. Shiffman radically alters the way we think of marketing by introducing her 6 V’s of marketing 2.0 as a replacement to the traditional 4 (or 5) P’s of marketing: Venture, Value, Voice, Verifiable, Vicinity and Vehicle. It seems that the book is launched at the right time, since the broader topic on engagement gets a lot of media attention lately with tools like Nuconomy and Microsoft’s efforts on engagement mapping. The book got great press coverage by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Don Tapscott, famous for his Wikinomics book, who both dub it as a must-read for marketeers. With the book, there is also a new weblog, which writes about companies that get the engagement thingy.

One personal side note: Engagement is more and more presented as thé next thing in marketing and analytics. But is engagement all their is or is their more? I personally would say there is more when looking at theories of Communities of Practice for instance. Communities of Practice have similarities, but also go deeper, than online communities. I guess I’ll write a post about this topic in the near future…

The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism

the Pirate’s DilemmaMat Mason, with a successful career as pirate radio and club DJ as well as tv show writer and producer, looks like a refreshing new appearance in the world of business slash entrepreneurial writing. His new book the Pirate’s Dilemma deals with the impact of open source on the distribution and control of information and is serious about piracy and copyright. The main point of the book is that piracy cán be productive in that it can create new valuable and viable mash-ups. The book got great press coverage by marketing guru Seth Godin. For some quick insight there is an interesting slideshare presentation on the website of the book. That’s a great example of eating your own dogfood!

Funny trivia: one of Amazon’s user generated reviews dubbed the book meaningful as the reviewer found out that his son was a pirate since he openly questioned college credentialism and stated that there was nothing he couldn’t learn on his own…

Web 2.0 Patterns: What entrepreneurs and information architects need to know

Web 2.0 patternsI’m a big fan of Dion Hinchcliffe’s writing on social media and web 2.0 so when he co-authors a book on Web 2.0 design patterns it must be good. In this book, author’s Duane Nickull, Dion Hinchcliffe, and James Governor describe core patterns of Web 2.0 together with an abstract model and reference architecture. It’s a great overview on web 2.0 and captures O’Reilly’s thoughts on the topic. But having read much of the posts of Hinchcliffe on this topic, I’m not sure whether this book offers any new insights altogether.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.