Elizabeth R. (esjro) -
Helpful Score: 2
The author of Click works for Hitwise, a company that tracks what people are doing online. In this book Bill Tancer shows how monitoring the terms web users search for using engines such as Google and click streams (the trail of sites visited during a surfing session) can be used to predict the next breakout band, the success of a new website, whether housing sales will rise or fall, and even the next winner of Dancing With the Stars. Tancer explains all this in a jargon-free way and his references to numbers and statistics are minimal, making this a surprisingly fast read. Along the way we learn mini histories of popular sites such as Wikipedia and Myspace, and the point at which celebrity interest turns to obsession.
My only complaint about this book is that he sticks with some topics a bit too long: I don't care enough about prom dress buying patterns to want to read a whole chapter on the topic. This gripe is relatively minor though, as most of the topics are current and interesting.
This book is sure to appeal to fans of Malcolm Gladwell. Tancer's book is shorter and easier to read than Gladwell's works however, which is probably a plus for the short attention spanned users of the Web 2.0 that Tancer describes.
My only complaint about this book is that he sticks with some topics a bit too long: I don't care enough about prom dress buying patterns to want to read a whole chapter on the topic. This gripe is relatively minor though, as most of the topics are current and interesting.
This book is sure to appeal to fans of Malcolm Gladwell. Tancer's book is shorter and easier to read than Gladwell's works however, which is probably a plus for the short attention spanned users of the Web 2.0 that Tancer describes.
