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Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations.

By Amy Shuen
April 2008
Pages: 266
ISBN 10: 0-596-52996-1 | ISBN 13: 9780596529963
Press Release (Average of 3 Customer Reviews)

Book description

Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money? This concise guide explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve the bottom line. Whether you're an executive, a small business owner, or an entrepreneur, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide illustrates through real life examples how various businesses are creating new opportunities on today's Web. This book is about strategy rather than the technology itself.
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Featured customer reviews

Good introduction to Web 2.0 thinking,  August 09 2008
Submitted by Jeff Kew, Vancouver-Indesign User Group   [Respond | View]

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide (Hardcover) by Amy Shuen (Author) delivers on its promise of providing effective strategies and a new way of thinking when it comes to using Web 2.0 tools to improve your business.

The book seems to be targeting marketing managers and business owners who rely on outside sources or other departments to research and implement these services. Amy Shuen provides a clear understanding of these concepts to those needing it.

One of the best resources of the book is the end-notes. The references that Amy cites gives the reader a great starting point to find more in depth material about specific topics.


Concise Introduction to the Business of Web 2.0,  July 15 2008
Submitted by Jeff Huckaby (rackAID)   [Respond | View]

The book is impressive in its clarity. Shuen's concise, clear language presents the marketing and business aspects of Web 2.0 without the typical hype. If you are new to Web 2.0, social networks and curious about the rise of Facebook, Youtube, and similar outlets, then give this book a thorough read. You will come away understanding the core business principles driving the success of these online behemoths.

One example of user-contributed value Shuen highlights is the tag cloud on Flickr. The tag cloud is a categorization of popular items on the site derived from user input. The tag cloud allows people to explore through concepts rather than just finding specific. Shuen reports that 85% of the photos in Flickr have human-added metadata. This data is used to better organize search and categorize the images. The interaction with the customer is a key item Shuen points out as critical to Flickr's success. This user contribution to the site generates value for all users. A key she says to successful Web 2.0 operations.

Shuen also highlights LinkedIn and Facebook. She describes positive network effects at work in these companies. On LinkedIn the value of the site is determined by the network it can offer you. When you join the network, you add a positive impact, your presence may lead to others to join or you may linked up previously separated groups. By joining the network you increase its utility to all users while simultaneously making it more attractive to non-users. These positive network effects as Shuen calls them are critical to Web 2.0 success.

A nice feature of the book, is that at the end of each chapter, Shuen presents Strategic and Tactical Questions. These are excellent bullet list to help you think about enabling Web 2.0 on your business or expanding your Web 2.0 up-start. For example, she encourages you to "think about positive network effects" taking place in your business. How have you actively considered and worked with positive network effects to grown your company?

Shuen break downs Web 2.0 into some key areas: collective user value, network effects, competence syndication, and recombinant innovation areas she documents as core to Web 2.0 business. If these you want to learn more about these concepts and Web 2.0 in general, this is the book to start.


Harvesting Social Network Effects,  June 02 2008
Submitted by Jose M. Baeza   [Respond | View]

Since I work in the technical side of web development, I somehow expected this book to be more about the technical attributes of this new phenomenon called Web 2.0. I was ready to read about AJAX and similar recent technical innovations and their effect on using the Internet to more successfully conduct business. Instead, the author, Amy Shuen, clearly states that this book is about strategy, rather than a focus on technology. The word "strategy" is in the book's title!
The book indeed focuses on marketing strategy. Ms Shuen demonstrates through real-life examples how various companies are creating new opportunities for success through Web 2.0 business models. She delves into the workings of Flickr, Google, Facebook, and Amazon to demonstrate how the underlying principles she has identified as Web 2.0 processes have been applied to drive each company to growth and profitability. Using Web 2.0 strategy, a company can start by offering a free service, such as a free search capability (Google) or a place to store, organize, access, and share personal photos (Flickr). The next step is then to reach a critical mass of active uploaders or users of the service to create powerful cross-network and social network effects. These network effects then can be mined for advertising and targeted pay-per-click marketing. Who would have thought a great free search web site could make billions of dollars per year!
There is still some amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people labeling it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator and architect of the web, in fact, has some really big doubts that Web 2.0 is different from Web 1.0 at all. On the other side, Tim O'Reilly, whose Web 2.0 conferences gave the name to the phenomenon, gives the following examples of Web 1.0 versus corresponding Web 2.0 entities:
Double Click versus Google AdSense; Ofoto versus Flickr; Akamai versus BitTorrent; mp3.com versus Napster; Britannica Online versus Wikepedia; personal websites versus blogging; page views versus cost per click; screen scraping versus web services; publishing versus participation; content management systems versus wikis; directories (taxonomy) versus tagging (“folksonomy”); stickiness versus syndication.
The above comparisons did provide me some sense of differentiation between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 properties; perhaps it might also enlighten some readers of this book.
In Chapter 6, the author presents her list of five steps to successful Web 2.0 implementation. She states that a key ingredient of many Web 2.0 projects is their ability to collect information from users and then share it in a form that people are willing to pay for. Determining how to build this collective user value is the difficult but essential first step. Another huge step is how to use the created network effects to achieve a successful and continuous revenue stream. This chapter, as well as the entire book, consists of guidelines and suggestions, of course, not clearly delineated steps to successful Web 2.0 implementation.
I would recommend this book both to the entrepreneur and business type person and to the "techie" person. I learned many things about Web 2.0 companies, the power of collaboration and social networking, and marketing strategies. The author's "End Notes" section of the book was also a great source of information and explanations about the whole subject of Web 2.0 terms.

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Media reviews
"Amy Shuen has unlocked the mystery of how the web has morphed into a new and richer user experience that is generating massively valuable business opportunities. We all know the popular stories of 20/somethings creating ventures worth billions in a few short months. Is this just a fad? A bubble? Or is it representative of a deeper shift in information pathways and business models? Dr. Shuen’s insightful guide shines a light on how this new “thing” we call web 2.0 is causing well accepted business theories and practices to be recombined into wholesale disruptions of major industries, creating robust opportunities for the nimble and insightful, and mortal threats to the timid and entrenched."
-- Jerry Engel, Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at Berkeley and partner, Monitor Ventures


"Fascinating read for Wall Street analysts and investors—providing critical economic frameworks to analyze and value investments within the Web 2.0 paradigm. Reveals the challenges many top companies face when key decision makers define the playing field linearly. Don’t be pennywise and pound foolish in this critical transition period—Read this book and start to think geometrically and exponentially in your strategies or be left vulnerable to companies that embed these frameworks into their organizational DNA."
-- Christa Quarles Sober, partner, internet analyst, Thomas Weisel Partners Equity Research


"Competing globally with dynamic capabilities is the top priority of multinational executives and managers everywhere. Rethinking strategy in a highly networked world is the big challenge. How can your company navigate successfully in this turbulent, highly networked and socially connected environment? Read this book to find out how Web 2.0 opens up a surprising new range of corporate strategies and business models you can try out, right from your laptop or Blackberry, in San Francisco, London, Paris, Shanghai or Bangalore."
-- David Teece, professor U.C. Berkeley and Vice-Chairman, Law and Economics Consulting Group



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Amy on Web 2.0

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"Amy Shuen has unlocked the mystery of how the web has morphed into a new and richer user experience that is generating massively valuable business opportunities."
--Jerry Engel, Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at Berkeley and partner, Monitor Ventures