Books for Understanding Social Media

Everybody has been asking us what books they should read to understand social media. People are trying to make sense of this newly connected world. How does Facebook affect my business? Should I be tweeting? Do blogs still matter? "Yes" is the answer to all three of those questions. Open a facebook account. Step up a search on Twitter. And for Pete's sake, keep in the blog going. Books provide context. They examine the broader implications. I am not sure we have worked out all the broader implications and with the snail pace of books, publishing is just catching up with the product. Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky comes the closest to making these complicated issues apparent. We reviewed the book in April for Jack Covert Selects. The impetus behind this post was from a list I ran across at bpodr.com (post one and post two). The list is pretty good and if you are not familiar with these, you have some reading to do.

• The Cluetrain Manifesto by Levine, Searle, Locke, and Weinberger
• Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel
• Groundswell by Li and Bernoff
• The Search by Battelle
• The Long Tail by Anderson
• Now is Gone by Livingston and Solis
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR by Meerman Scott
• Purple Cow and Meatball Sundae by Godin
• Always Be Testing by Eisenberg & Quarto-vonTivadar with Davis

There are some new books on the way like The Twitter Book from Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein and, in the fall, Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What's It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg. We'll report more as we see them.