Book Review: Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide

Posted by trav in Book Reviews, Book Talk      No comments

Jun
3

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide by Amy Shuen (O’Reilly Media)
Like everyone competing in business today, I am buried in unhelpful technology trend books. But I had not made it out of Shuen’s Preface before realizing. . .

this book will become the “bible” for doing business online. Her data, examples and analysis are unparalleled, outside of a classroom. Shuen is a professor, by day, so her presentation of material is very clean. All of the ideas and elements fully support one another with no esoteric ideas of how money is made and attributing things to “the crowd”.

It seems that most every Web 2.0 business book spends half og the time showing you how to sign-up for services and tools and most never go beyond discussing trends and services. No trends here. Using hard data, she outlines business models, revenue streams and network effects. It’s not just definitions and case studies either. For every Flickr, Facebook and Google example, Shuen takes the space to explain how to leverage these same models, strategies and cash flows for yourself. It’s fantastically useful and qualifies for a rearely given 5 out 5!