Kade Dworkin

Unlike most my reviews, this one is being written about two weeks after I read the book.  While I don't feel that has hurt my recall of the books major points I expect that the minor ones have been overwritten by the books I've read since.

The premise of Mitch Joel's (@mitchjoel) book really boils down to the fact that we're closer than we ever have been.  Instead of six people away we're now six pixels away from anyone and everyone.  The immediacy of information on an individual is at first startling but brings forth what he calls the Trust Economy.  Through the course of the book he speaks of a lot of areas where social media have begun to change human behavior and while initially being viewed as negative that in the end it really is positive. 

Overall a lot of the core messages in this book at those that are repeated by most social media pundants: You are your own brand and it doesn't hurt to be in a small niche, you're fighting for people's attention and not the platform to speak, hyper-personalized news and media streams are the way to go, full commitment to moving forward in this space is required and the creation of digital natives/nomads who will never know the inside of an office cubicle.

By far the best chapter in the book in my eyes is titled "Digital Darwinsim" and really dives in deep about how companies who create digital presences and then fail to create and tend to the community around them are simply cutting at their own arms.  These businesses have a false sense of completion when they hit "publish" for the first time and expect that the social media issue is resolved once and for all.  Joel has a great description of how traffic doesn't mean you have a community and that attention doesn't mean the folks trust or even like you.  That really hit home for me.  Maybe it was the fact that I've been listening and reading too much of Gary Vaynerchuk's content recently but I'm beginning to think that numbers don't matter for how a social media manager does their job but that they are a necessary evil to prove the business relevance of tactics that they choose to use.  This book only gives me further ammunition for that thought process.

The closest I can compare this book to is Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams: a smart read for people in the know but those who aren't are bound to get lost in the details that are omitted or feeling like they need more context on the details they get.  It's obvious from the passion that Joel presents that he cares greatly about the topic and wants to convey that this area can make a huge difference in all areas of a person's life and will over the course of their lifetime.  While I loved the writing style and found it really easy to read, at the end of the day, I've found better texts that make this approachable by normal folks approaching social media.  I would only recommend this book to someone who already has a working knowledge in the space and is looking for ways to better classify and categorize their knowledge with only a small expectation to open up their frame further.

I don't like panning books because I know the immense amount of work that goes into them but at the end of the day unless you're exactly that person I described in the paragraph above you can safely pass on this one.