San Andreas Chapter

Book Review - Facebook Era

Shih, Clara (2009). Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences and Sell More Stuff. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.  (ISBN 978-0-13-715222-3, pbk.)

Clara Shih has done an excellent job of describing and documenting how social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are ushering in a new era.  Facebook Era, her new book, clearly documents and describes how these networks have influenced business relationships and cultures and even altered workplace environments.  Shih offers some realistic insights and practical suggestions as to what companies might do to strategically and tactically survive and possibly thrive in these dynamic environments.  

This book is divided into three major sections:  "Part I: Brief History of Social Media," "Part II: Transforming the Way We Do Business," and "Part III: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Using Facebook for Business."  Especially as knowledgeable information professionals, this approximately 200-paged book should be on your must read list.

In Part I Shih provides the reader with a good foundation for understanding today’s technical and social forces of change.  The author not only identifies what has changed, but also how these changes have provided the foundation for current business environments.  Some may remember when data was submitted to mainframe computers in the form of paper punched cards, through online terminals, or from stand-alone computers or PCs.  If we look at these technologies historically, we can all appreciate how the end-user practice has been shaped with new technology.  This author encourages readers to reflect on how these technological changes were introduced and implemented.  She then explores how work environments have been influenced or affected by various online networking technologies.  This big picture overview helps readers both to better understand and to appreciate the online social networking revolution and its related impacts.  With this backdrop readers can appreciate that these changes have not only empowered users, but also how they have greatly transformed how we do business.  

Part I provides a good foundation and a logical transition to Part II, entitled “Transforming the Way We Do Business,” which begins with Chapter Four, “Social Sales.”  The topics covered in this chapter focus on transformations, i.e. sales cycles, multiple network structures and the introduction of Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM).  Some want to call CRM the first social network.  Shih examines how a Silicon Valley start-up harnessed three key collective networks of employees from MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn that have helped to develop source leads and build personal relationships.  Chapter Five, entitled “Social Network Marketing,” focuses on new marketing techniques which were potentially made possible through the use of online social networks.  Among the techniques discussed are hyper-targeting, conducting rapid testing, and capturing passive interest indicators.  It features two case studies, one from Victoria's Secret and a second from BonoBoos, a startup.  These studies suggested that both large and small businesses can achieve market success though the use of Facebook and other social networking tools.  Chapter Six, entitled "Social Innovation," describes how the stages of innovation from generating concepts, prototyping, and commercial implementation, to continual iteration became more effective and efficient with online social networking.  It provides current examples of how organizations are working with customers to improve both their products and their customer experience. 

Chapter Seven, "Social Recruiting," demonstrates how recruiting tasks can be enhanced, and provides examples of how to use Facebook and LinkedIn to find potential candidates or to keep in touch with current candidates.  Also, anyone looking for new opportunities may find many useful ideas and suggestions within this chapter.  There is an interesting section, especially written for managers and/or human resources staff, entitled "How to Protect Against Employee Poaching."

Part III, "Your Step-by-Step Guide to Using Facebook for Business," (Chapters 8-12) focuses on how to implement ideas. Chapter Eight, "Engage your Customers," begins with a strong recommendation to first identify key business objectives, then to establish a sound strategy for applying these objectives.  With this as a foundation, the organization should be in a much better position to identify their "key to success" milestones.  She strongly encourages companies to listen to what customers are saying about their brands through the use of Twitter and Facebook.  Shih further suggests using appropriate social networking sites to find unsanctioned communities and/or potential customer audiences in order to reach, define, and establish your presence.

Chapter Nine, "Get Your Message Across," provides a set of step-by-step instructions on how to tactfully execute on social networks. As in Chapter Five, this author does an excellent job of describing marketing techniques as well as providing examples from successful firms, i.e., Wendy’s, Green Works and other sources.  Chapter Ten, "Build and Manage Your Relationships" includes useful information on how to set up and interact with a Facebook account.  It includes useful tips for creating effective profiles, establishing connections, organizing contracts, and even managing different identities across both personal and professional contracts.  In this chapter the author offers her thoughts on what to consider when working with a friend.  She also includes some basic tips on business etiquette. Shih strongly encourages the reader to think about how readers might use offline as well as online networks. Suggestions related to the sometimes sensitive topic of introductions are also included.  Keep in mind that even though most examples from this book are based on Facebook, they can be easily applied to other social networking services.  

Chapter Eleven, "Corporate Governance & Strategy," is another extremely useful chapter.  It encourages the reader to think about what they have learned from the previous sections and challenges them to think about how best to apply these ideas in their individual environments.  It points out some of the key risks to consider.  Shih highlights privacy procedures and policy issues around intellectual property and confidentiality.  She emphasizes that these important issues must be considered from both pro and con perspectives.  This goes beyond choosing the right network model, identifying key risk areas, and partnering with the best legal, information technology and public relations support.  The author here speaks to the challenges, obstacles, and realities of implementing social networking technologies in a corporate setting.  This chapter specifically encourages businesses to consider the risks around privacy, security, intellectual property, confidentiality, and brand misrepresentation and the importance of partnering closely with legal and IT departments to decrease these risks.  Chapter Twelve, "The Future of Social Business," suggests that the current development level of online social networking has many parallels to where we were in the late 80s in terms of Internet enhancements.  Though there are plenty of unknowns, such as which vendors and business models will prevail, some trends are already taking shape.  For example, we are seeing flatter organizations, stronger offline communities, more participation by small businesses in greater collaboration across organizations, and tighter integration with mobile devices.  Despite the uncertainty, companies need to start thinking now about how this revolution will affect their business so that they can take the necessary steps to thrive in the "Facebook Era."

In summary, this book offers readers an overview of players, services, and support along with an interesting and selective representation of selective rankings based on Web traffic data.  Readers may even want to start with an examination of the snapshot of top sites prior to reading this very informative volume.  Facebook Era was written by a knowledgeable practitioner who has much to offer the reader, including interesting perspectives of online social networks, how to reach new audiences, build better products, and perhaps to enhance sales in this fast moving world.  Consider listening in on, and perhaps joining, the conversations at www.thefacebookera.com or other sources.  One thing this book strongly implies is that the business and professional world today is all about connections, innovations, and collaborations.

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This review was submitted by Karen Takle Quinn. You can contact her at ktqATsbcglobalDOTnet.

Book Review: The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam

By Karen Takle Quinn, Ph.D.

Roam, Dan. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.  New York: Portfolio, 2007. (ISBN 978-1-59184-199-9)

Dan Roam is the founder and president of Digital Roam Inc., a management-consulting firm that helps business executives solve complex problems through visual thinking.  His 2007 book, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, was published by Portfolio.  Its goal is to teach readers how to solve problems with pictures using visual thinking.  Every chapter supports and illustrates Roam’s central idea that "Visual thinking is an extraordinarily powerful way to solve problems and though it may appear to be something new, the fact is that we already know how to do it." (page 31).  According to another visual thinking advocate, Robert E. Horn, words and pictures have been combined to improve human communication since the invention of written language.  This was especially "notable in the culture of Ancient Egypt." (Horn, Visual Language, 1998, pp.25-26).

We all have problems when communicating with someone who does not speak or understand our language.  Roam found that even when you learn to speak their language, as he did with Russian, visual thinking pictures are still especially useful when trying to share ideas with clients.

Book Review: More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places, by Michael J. Mauboussin

By Karen Takle Quinn, Ph.D.

Michael J. Mauboussin has a reputation for being especially good at explaining difficult concepts and showing the links between diverse ideas and fields.  His 2006 book More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (New York: Columbia University Press ISBN 0-231-13870-9) has been selected both as the best book in Economics for 2006 and by Business Week as one of the top 2006 business books.  He is currently Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and also an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Business School.  Originally, many of these essays were written when Mauboussin was Chief US Investment Strategist for Credit Suisse First Boston. These essays now have been updated, revised and published by Columbia University Press within 30 brief chapters divided among following four sections: "Investment Philosophy," "Psychology of Investing," "Innovation and Competitive Strategy," and "Science and Complexity Theory."  In fifty short essays, Mauboussin explains many abstract and complex financial or economic concepts.  Frequently he uses observations from nature, for example, the feeding patterns of ants, the strange behavior of slime mold, or the fast evolution of fruit flies to illustrate a point or to help the reader to think about a topic from a different perspective.  He cites and relates ideas, illustrations and concepts from a wide range of interesting books and published papers.

Book Review: The Box - by Marc Levinson

By Karen Takle Quinn, Ph.D.

With his book The Box (Princeton University Press, 2006), Marc Levinson delivers an engrossing account of how the modern shipping container has revolutionized the flow of goods around the world. As Levinson notes, people now take for granted their access to an enormous selection of goods from all over the world. This unglamorous, little-noticed, and some call “ugly” shipping container has changed the world in more ways than most of us realize. I might never have read this fascinating story, if it had not been for its inclusion in Business Week best 2006 list.

Levinson delivers a detailed and engaging account of how this box came to be. Of particular note is his chronicle of Malcolm P. McLean, a North Carolina truck driver, who 50 years ago, after building a freight empire, gambled everything to create the first company with containerized ships. Levinson explains that today on the wharfs across the world rows of enormous cranes go into action almost as soon as an arriving ship ties up. These cranes are huge steel structures, some more than 200 feet high and often weighing millions pounds. They are positioned so that several truck lanes and even trains can pass underneath. These cranes move forward riding on rails that run parallel to the sides of the ships. Each crane extends above the dock far enough to span the width of the ship. It is said that some of these ships may be wider than the Panama Canal. The trucks, trains, and other vehicles with incoming containers are driven underneath the appropriate stacking crane. The crane picks up containers and moves them to their appropriate destination.

Book Review: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More – by Chris Anderson

By Karen Takle Quinn, Ph.D.

Chris Anderson shows in The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (NY: Hyperion Press, 2006. ISBN 1-4013-0237-8) how the Internet is changing the way everyone does business. He suggests that the future of commerce and culture isn’t in high volume hits but in what used to be regarded as misses—the endless long tail of that same curve. Many years of research have gone into this book. It is partly an economics research project. Economics seeks to find neat, easily understood frameworks that describe real world phenomena. Anderson, as editor-in-chief of Wired, first published his “tail” ideas in an article in the October 2004 issue. This article became the most citied article Wired had ever run. In statistics, curves like those described are called “long-tail distributions.” Anderson coined the term “The Long Tail” to help to explain how our culture and economy is shifting focus away from the head, “mainstream products and markets,” toward the tail, the “ever-expanding universe of niche products and businesses.” Many suggest that The Long Tail is the most important business book since The Tipping Point. It was selected by Business Week as one of the best 2006 business books. It reveals that companies are seeing demands in categories that had previously been dismissed, and it reports that everything a company puts out finds a demand of some sort. The economics of ”online” keeps going while the traditional retailer is influenced and limited by shelf space and the cost of maintaining inventories. The infrequent sellers have value in the online market even though they are only selling in small numbers because their aggregates add up to big business. Anderson suggests that letting people choose for themselves will create new opportunities for consumers and businesses.

Image from jacket cover of The Long Tail.