Rohit's nukkad

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Book Review - Click – What Millions of People Are Doing Online And Why It Matters

Bill Tracer, the author is a guy who “loves data”. He talks about this job in this book about analyzing huge amounts of search data on the Internet. The work involves understanding people mindset and in general understanding current worldly search trends.

The author most importantly talks about odd and sporadic behavior seen on the Internet based on the search engine data. He talks about False Hope Syndrome which a lot of people go though due to failed new year resolutions or how the third week of January is the most depressing week of January.

The author talks in length about Web 2.0 where the user content plays an important part. Websites like Facebook, MySpace are part of Web 2.0. For Web 2.0 user participation is calculated as 90-9-1 formula where out of 100 people visiting a web page 90 of them are passive visitors, 9 are partial participant, only one is an active participant. He talks about people like Tila Tequila, on MySpace who has over a million friends. From his analysis based on so much data Bill divides the people online into five categories – innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and the Laggards. Its the Early adopters that you need to look for a profitable online business or popularity.

Overall the book gives a nice perspective about internet search data analysis, how people behave on the net. It talks about some good examples about the strange behavior of the net and walks you though them. Though a lot of examples are specific events related like Katrina or how there was a search surge for Pontiac G6 after a specific advertisement, there are some which can look for trends over years like shopping trends for prom dresses or how new year resolution related like weight loss search. The book is recommended as casual read.