10 Free eBooks About Web 2.0

By Ian, on October 31st, 2006

I expect you’re fed up of waiting for my book to appear. I know I am. In the meantime, stay up to speed and save money with ten free e-​​books about Web 2.0 and Social Media. In no par­tic­ular order…

1) Social Media or, “How I learned to stop worrying and love com­mu­nic­a­tion” by Australian PRs Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins. A good, intro­ductory guide to Web 2.0, blogs and social media with useful tips on getting started with blogging and pod­casting. It’s only 30 pages so is ideal for students and the very busy.

2) What is Social Media? by former posh UK PR and now Search Engine Marketing guru Antony Mayfield, is also an intro­ductory guide to the subject. In Antony’s words, “The book is a romp through a defin­i­tion of social media, why it is important, and some of the main iter­a­tions (blogs, wikis, podcasts, content com­munities and social networks) and a bonus bit on Second Life.” Also nice and short.

3) The Cluetrain Manifesto by Chris Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. First pub­lished in 1999, this is the book that started all this engage­ment and ‘markets as con­ver­sa­tions’ palaver. It’s avail­able as a hardback on Amazon, but students and the like will appre­ciate that the entire text is also avail­able online.

4) The Long Tail by Chris Anderson seemed to be every­where over the summer. Cheats who missed the oppor­tunity to read it then may prefer to catch up by reading this free, super-​​condensed, 30-​​page version. There’s some repe­ti­tion in the real thing, to be honest, so I’d recom­mend that you do.

5) From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage by NY PR con­sultancy Envision Solutions talks about why social media matters to com­panies and what they can do to take advantage of the oppor­tun­ities it offers. It’s based around the health­care industry, but is equally applic­able to any other sector. (author: Fard Johnmar)

6) Web 2.0 Mindmap by devel­op­ment guru Ed Yourdon. Not a book, of course, but a Mind Map covering all the key concepts around this phe­nomenon with a wealth of links to resources across the internet. It’s updated fairly fre­quently so keep checking back for the latest version. I’m not really a mindmaps person, but I still find it very useful.

7) Blogs and Community by Seattle-​​based e-​​facilitation and e-​​community spe­cialist Nancy White is a slightly more academic look at the phe­nomenon of blogs and social networks and the dif­ferent kinds of com­mu­nic­a­tion models that they entail. That might sound a little scary, but it isn’t. And there’s a handy podcast of the paper avail­able here.

8) We Media by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis (website here) is, as you might expect, about citizen journ­alism. In the authors’ words, “Historically, journ­al­ists have been charged with informing the demo­cracy. But their future will depend not on only how well they inform but how well they encourage and enable con­ver­sa­tions with citizens. That is the challenge.”

9) We-​​think by Charles Leadbetter is about “what the rise of the likes of Wikipedia and Youtube, Linux and Craigslist means for the way we organise ourselves, not just in digital busi­nesses but in schools and hos­pitals, cities and main­stream cor­por­a­tions”. Published online, the idea is that readers’ comments become an integral part of the whole work.

10) New Influencers by Paul Gillin is to be pub­lished in dead-​​tree format next year. In the meantime, the author offers drafts of the whole thing in both HTML and MS Word format. It’s about the rise of blogs and blogging, what it means for busi­nesses and how they can best engage with this new environment.

Any others you are aware of?

11) Thanks, Antony, for a reminder about Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler. The intro­duc­tion says “Production is shifting from physical products like blue jeans, to decent­ral­ized inform­a­tion goods, like articles on the Internet. This gives users more power (they can publish instead of just reading), creates more oppor­tun­ities for demo­cratic par­ti­cip­a­tion, lowers costs for devel­oping coun­tries, and demo­crat­izes the creation of our culture.” It should keep you busy a while longer once you’ve finished the others…

12) Since I have allowed one academic paper, I shouldn’t miss the col­lec­tion of Papers and Talks pub­lished by Danah Boyd. The talk about G/​localisation is espe­cially recommended.

13) Thanks, Ed, for the good word about Knock, Knock by Seth Godin. Not social media or Web 2.0 as such. It’s about creating websites that actually work, so probably all of us want to read this one, whatever your interests. And also Who’s There?, a follow-​​up I haven’t read yet, but which Ed reckons is more Web 2.0ish. Two more: Everyone’s An Expert (about Squidoo) and Flipping the Funnel.

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