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 by Clara Shih.

Clara Shih works for salesforce.com, she also designs widgets for business that are used on Facebook.  Her background is both technical and sales focused.  She is of course advertising her book on Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/thefacebookera




The author describes how there is increasing convergence between social networks and business networks.  Companies are using sites like Twitter and Linkedin to manage their interactions with their customers.  Recently Apple announced that they were creating a new network called Ping for iTunes which connects its customers with music and musicians.  This is an example of the interconnecction.  http://techpinger.com/2010/09/apple-announces-itunes-10-with-ping-music-social-network/ 



Clara Shih  has specific chapters on marketing, recruiting, customer service, innovation (this surprised me), sales, and networking.  She introduces the book with how social networks came into existence.  It is a step by step overview of the development from mainframes  to computers to the internet to social networking.  I especially like her description of the "social graph"-- the map of how people are connected to each other on the internet.




This book does not have a bibliography at the end.  What it does have is numerous computer screen captures depicting different activities on social networking sites as well as many urls for websites.  It is quite visual with charts, graphs, and lists.  There is an index at the back of thebook.




The best part of this book was the concepts it introduced; the social graph, the convergence of social networking and business networking, and the sense of innovation available to people who are willing to try new things with social networks. I niticed after I finished reading it, that they just came out with a new second edition on July 31, 2010.