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Trade Book Review—Naked Conversations
- 1. Trade Book Review—Naked Conversations: How blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers Authors: Robert Scoble and Shel Israel Review written by: Marie Walker
- 2. Authors Robert Scoble American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Best known for his blog, Scobleizer. Currently works for Rackspace and is building a community for Internet fanatics called Building 43. Shel Israel Writer and speaker on social media issues. Senior fellow for the Society for New Media Research. Author of the book Twittervillewhich was published in 2009.
- 3. What did you learn by reading this book? The authors define naked conversations as businesses and their constituents having conversations on a level playing field. I’ve never thought about the whole social media phenomenon in this way before. This definition makes the title of the book more understandable and provides for a great new way of looking at blogging and social media tools in general. I learned that the act of blogging didn’t really start catching on until the year 2000. I knew that it had to have had a start point but I don’t think anyone really thinks about the whole “where did this all begin?” sort of question.
- 4. What surprised you in this book? I found it quite surprising when the authors basically stated that their was no real purpose to this book. The authors believe that a book called The CluetrainManisfesto has already told the story that they have to tell. They believe that The Cluetrain Manifesto pretty much cannot be topped but the purpose of Naked Conversations is fill in the gap with knowledge that has become apparent since The Cluetrain Manifesto was published.
- 5. What do you want to learn more about, now that this book has piqued you interest? After hearing the great review that the authors gave to The Cluetrain Manifesto, I am very interested in giving the book a read for myself. I have chosen to read this book for the other book review that I have to do for another class.
- 6. Would you recommend this book to other students? I would not recommend this book to the average student. I personally found it quite uninteresting because reading about blogging is of no interest to me. I would only recommend this book to those students who would like to learn more about blogging and its early days.
- 7. Contact Information Email: mw01664@georgiasouthern.edu Blog: marielorelei.wordpress.com
Editor's Notes
- Naked Conversations was written by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. It was published in 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. The text is about 232 pages long. The main topics of the book are the history of blogging, the importance of blogging, and the impact that it has had and could have on the world as we know it.
- Robert Scoble’s blog has earned acclaim in Fortune magazine, Fast Company, and The Economist. His blog which was started in 2000 now boasts more than 3.5 million readers every year.Shel Israel has had a helping hand in bringing some great technological innovations to the general public. Some of most successful products that he has helped bring to fruition includes: PowerPoint, FileMaker, and Sun Microsystems workstations.
- Naked Conversations page 4: “Naked Conversations is about businesses and their constituencies just talking with each other on an equal plane. This is not really new. It’s what the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker practiced before their businesses either became chains, franchises, and superstores or were exterminated by them.”
- Naked Conversations page 4: “But the philosophy ignited in 2000, when a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto touched a nerve in its argument that markets are conversations—particularly among unemployed developers who were about to build blogging’s essential tools and among marketing people who were wondering why so much had soured. Philosophically, Naked Conversations can’t add much to what was presented in Cluetrain. Nor do we see the need. We think universal truths, as one of Cluetrain’s authors says, are pretty much self-evident.”
- The Cluetrain Manifesto was written by Fredrick Levine, Christopher Locke, David Searls, and David Weinberger. It was published in 2000 by Perseus Publishing, New York, NY. The book is basically a collection of 95 theses into a manifesto which calls for businesses to join the online marketplace that is the internet. The entire text can be read by visiting www.cluetrain.com.
- I have never found the act of blogging to be of any interest. I have attempted to maintain a personal blog a few times but I’ve found that I’d rather live my life than spend time rehashing my day online. I have had to maintain blogs for academic purposes because they were required by my professors. I honestly believe that without the threat of a bad grade looming over my head, there is no way on Earth that I’d be able to make myself keep a constant thread of posts going.Those who have the time and interest level to maintain blog would probably find this book to be of value. The authors do a great job to express that they believe that blogging is reshaping the way that companies and consumers communicate with each other. I agree that the internet and social media has revolutionized the way that we communicate as a society. The communication model has changed and companies can now receive customer feedback instantaneously which allows for a better relationship between the two. Maybe somewhere in the future, when social media has completely taken over our universe, we won’t need to be bombarded by commercials and advertisements because companies will get all the feedback they need from online communities.
- I chose only to include online contact information because I like to maintain a very high level of privacy. I check my email quite frequently and all blog comments are sent to my email so that I can respond to comments promptly.