Book Review: “Grouped: How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web”
The book I want to highlight today is for anyone who really wants to understand the true power of social media today.
Let me start by giving a basic explanation of social media and how we got to where we are today.
Ready? Here we go…
When the internet started out it was known as “The Information Highway.”
Phase 1: When the internet first started it was just information/documents linked together. That was all it was.
The next phase (the in-between phase) gave us some limited opportunities to interact with others. (Two examples of these early types of interaction are: leaving a book review on a site like Amazon and another example would be online bulletin boards.)
But something has changed significantly with social media today. What we are now dealing with is what is called Web 2.0 or “The Social Network.”
Phase 2: People are now connecting with each other online.
What does this have to do with you as a small business owner? No much if you haven’t read the book “Grouped: How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web.”
By reading this book, you’ll discover why this new phase of the internet is so important.
This book is written by a guy named Paul Adams. He currently works in the product team at Facebook. Prior to that he led social research at Google.
Not only that, he’s recognized as one of the leading thinkers on the emerging social web, and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, AdWeek and many more leading publications. He knows what he’s talking about!
In this book, he talks about the transformation that’s taking place on the web today and how you can really use it effectively for your business.
Here are a few excerpts from the book:
- “Thanks to the web, our access to information is increasing exponentially, and is not going to stop. A single query into a search engine produces millions of results.”
- “People are adding information to Wikipedia faster than we can read it: 1000 unique articles are added every day, on top of all the edits and additions to existing articles. We’re creating 2000 tweets per second, 48 hours of YouTube uploads per minute.”
- “In 2002, we recorded and replicated 23 exabytes of information. We now record and transfer that much information every 7 days.”
- “The web is being rebuilt around people, rather than being built around content.”
- One of the most powerful things he says in the book is this, “Social is not a feature. Social is not an application. Social is a deep human motivation that drives our behavior almost every second that we’re awake. It doesn’t matter if we’re online or offline, on a browser or using an app. Humans are social creatures.”
He then reveals some of the inside information that he’s gleaned from working at Facebook about the real ways to leverage the power of social media.
If you want to really understand the power of social media, if you really want to understand why it’s so important for you to learn how to use it effectively, then you should grab a copy of this book. It’s short and an easy read.
You can grab a copy on Amazon.com here. (*You can also take a sneak peek inside the book there now.)
NOTE: BHH always uses affiliate links to Amazon, but we never recommend a book simply for the commission. (It’s not big enough to be worth that.) We just think that Amazon might as well cover an occasional Starbucks drink for us in exchange for sending people to buy books from them! 🙂 **If it bothers you that the links above are affiliate links, then copy the title above and go to Amazon.com here. No commission will be given to us if you use the link in the previous sentence. The book is worth it for you to get it either way!
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