Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business [Paperback]

Advertising of that book was pretty good and convincing:it made me buy it. After I've read all comments on the author's blog for that famous already video () I got really excited and now I am a bit disappointed.

Erik starts off saying that writing about such dynamic subject requires facts being commented rather then stated and listed and then he would fill up pages with stats, numbers and would repeat the same obviousness: how great social media environment is for business, supporting it with quite predictable scenarios. Not mentioning that the amount of information about Obama's campaign is making this book twice as thick as it actually is necessary. This book may be useful for those who need to impress others in boardroom with meaningless numbers and rather obvious facts to push their ideas, not mentioning that Obama is a key to open many doors in conversation. For those that know what facebook or twitter are and for passive/occassional social media users, such as myself, this books is a page-skipper rather then page-turner. As a repository of, for that moment of time, actual statistics and facts, this books makes a good encyclopedia-like supplement. It is easier and faster to get the same info from the web though. If I'd ever wanted to go back to those facts I'd rather use good-old google. Hence this book seems to be written out of necessity: it is a hot topic, so let's make some money. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless you have no idea what social media is and you'd want to make business and look into numbers that after a while would seem irrelevant anyway. It is difficult to compare it to such masterpieces as "We think" We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production simply because this book is trying to write about something in such an obvious way that it is rather uninspiring. While Leadbeater shakes the world with comments and just few good examples. Qualman simply overdoses facts, examples, stats and lacks what he promises at the beginning: inspiring comments and interpretations. Doing so he seems to make a huge claim that he knows best of how it is and how to succeed on that field. Reading this book I had a feeling of being in a classroom with an old school teacher who would throw dry facts in a sermon style at me.

I haven't found there much that I wouldn't know or that would inspire and teach me, maybe because I am web savvy and I look for information myself. This book is good for those who are, well actually were, lazy and now need a bit of catch up.

This book makes you think about socialnomics and the social networking we do...gave me some great ideas - but ones which I should have had in anycase. It is a common sense reminder of things we do not spend enough time thinking about - it gives food for thought! A great read and recommended - case studies and examples are clear an no nonsense.

For people who have stuck with traditional marketing for to long, this is truly mind-opening. Easy to grasp the concepts of the field presented in this book.

For people already in the business of SMM, there is probably not much to gain by reading this book.

I enjoyed reading it.