Booklist 2.0: April 2009

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 Whuffie Factor written by Tara Hunt, The Facebook Era written by Clara Shih and World Wide Rave written by David Meerman Scott.

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business

Lots and lots about social networking this month. Let’s start with The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business written by Tara Hunt. Oh my, what an extraordinary book title. Whuffie stands for the social capital that organizations can gain from participating in social media. One of the book’s main purposes is to prevent organizations from “throwing a bunch of money” into social media, without having a clear strategy on it’s main benefits, namely building connections and social recommendations with your audience. I’m not fully satisfied with this perspective, since financial capital always is a main driver for organizations. However, moving the focus towards tools and methods to really increase social capital in this 2.0 era is an interesting perspective.

The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff

The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff, written by Clara Shih, is about the fundamental impact social media and -networks have on traditional businesses. As social networking thought leader, director of social networking alliances & product strategy at Salesforce and responsible for Salesforce’s connections with Facebook, Shih definitely knows what she is talking about. This is reflected in an interesting perspective in the book, namely the transformation of the business promise of social networking into reality. The Facebook Era offers practical action plans and insights on how to  leverage social media, Good to see that more and more books on social media move away from abstract descriptions and move towards becoming practical guides. The Facebook Era fits nicely into this movement.

World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories

World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories is written by David Meerman Scott. Scott is also the author of the much appraised work The New Rules of Marketing and PR, which I also highly value. This should raise expectations of World Wide Rave and it seems his latest work can live up to this premise. In World Wide Rave, Scott uses the term Rave to describe when “people around the world are talking about you, your company, and your products. It’s when communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It’s when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. It’s when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there”. Scott claims that everyone can fire a world wide rave. An interesting statement, but the burning question of course is how! And this is an important part of the book, which is filled with examples and guidance. World Wide Rave is (again) deemed as one of the more important books of the Internet Era.