Book Recommendation: Groundswell

I wanted to share a quick recommendation: Groundswell, a book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. The book combines the two Forrester Research analysts insights and experience in social web technologies, it's future and how it impacts the corporate world. The authors describe Groundswell as "A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations" While most of us are familiar with the infamous Dell Hell case, the book has a number of fantastic examples of how companies and celebrities have been overpowered by the collective actions of the masses.  One interesting example in this book is that of what came to be known as the "Streisand effect" when the celebrity diva tried unsuccessfully to get an image of her house "unindexed". The amazing thing is that while companies are still obsessing over targeting influential bloggers in the hopes of never repeating the Dell Hell episode, they are forgetting the simple fact that the Web is far more social today. Take for instance what happened when Digg tried to take down the encryption key -- Digg users revolted and finally Digg had to give in. This book is a must read for everyone in advertising, media, social media, marketing, PR -- heck! I would say just about anyone in the corporate sector should read this book. It is also insightful for social media researchers regarding what is important from a business perspective and how we can offer the right solution/apply  our research on real-world problems. While I am still reading this book, I'm already loving it and wanted to share this recommendation with everyone. This book nicely complements the recent series I have read: "Once Lucky, Twice you are Good", "Here Comes Everybody" and "Sync". A more detailed review is pending... as soon as I can finish the book. Oh, and BTW, a friend of mine gifted me another book "The Social Life of Information" which is also in my to-read pile. It is a bit old, but perhaps you might find it interesting too.

Comments

[Matthew Hurst]

I think we should use the power of social media and collective action to lobby the authors of books like this to try to find other examples than Dell Hell, digg DVD encryption or the AOL customer service call. The impression one gets from ready these anecdotes over and over again is that there really isn't a trend out there.

Someone needs to write a book that relies on analyzing the data to make the point rather than repeating these stories.

[Akshay Java]

Matt, that is a great point you make. I think there is enough analysis + experiments on social media data (along with some very good anecdotal examples) from the research community that would make a good book. Perhaps at some point we could invite authors from the community to contribute to book chapters on social media and publish it under the auspices of ICWSM. Perhaps this type of a book would be different from the 'marketing books' out there -- but would be very relevant for researchers.

From what I have read so far, it looks like the book groundswell is based more on the surveys and analyst reports that Forrester Research releases -- so there is some analysis that probably went into it.
Thanks
Akshay