The Facebook Era - Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences And Sell More Stuff

The Face Book Era was one of the books I grabbed from Waterstone large book stores. It is written by Clara Shih.

It says that she created the first business application with partnership of Facebook.

But what are the pros and cons of Facebook Era?

The pros is, it’s very detailed and really goes deep into tapping into the Online Social Networks.

There's theory and then it dives into the practical step by step guide for business owners to apply.

Sometimes showing screen shots, although I felt not enough,

It starts by giving us the history of main frames, leading to the PC, into the world wide web. It gradually progresses into the online social graph and how it evolved as the internet empowers users.

 It's very detailed and gives a thorough ground work before you step into the world of Social Media and Facebook.

The great part about this book is - you're not left wondering how did Social Media suddenly showed up. And how to target your customers instead of chasing everyone.

Theory and practical with a dose of history too.

Facebook Era took me on journey about Digital Storage to creation.

Then it began to make sense as the pages revealed how history was being made with media distribution, which was a major problem for startup businesses.

Not anymore.

It also tackles the problems that we face today in social filtering and why Facebook is different and why is it really unique. It is a whole another level kind of book that needs you read bit by bit and you can flick from different contents without being lost.

It is a magical world and you suddenly realise, it is really about targeting, segmenting and relationships with people.

The relationship part and engaging the audiences provides the business owners valuable information.

She shows how you can engage, create an audience, ask questions to create better products, customer service, and the customers are "targeted" using a Facebook tools.

What it really got me is the power of Facebook Advertising,

This page really got me excited to open my eyes on how you can literally target your customers in a more creative and segmented way.

Clara Shih goes into detail when she takes the reader, step by step in how to use Facebook...

• From strategy and objectives.
• Creating your own community.
• Defining and establishing presence.
• Clear cut hyper segmenting your audience.
• And how to hyper segment and target prospects, customers with precision. 

And much more...

What Bugged Me A Little...

I felt the book would have been great if it didn't dive into too much history from the begining. Instead, it dived into Facebook.

It didn't make sense for me at first and I was wondering why so much on history and not just dive into Facebook.

There were some words, that got me and it felt at times, it was from a programmer talking and went over my head at times.

Still, I also feel that's not the authors fault but rather, it is for me to invest more in the terms and languages of technology, and also English. Hahaha.

For example, marketing words like Hypersegmenting hahahaha. A mouthful and I was like, "What? Eh?"

Some tools, applications she covered are not in use anymore.

Or they still work in progress.

For example, like Lexicon, - which measures frequency in three ways- the number of posts in which keyword appears, the numbers of Facebook members who hav referenced the keywrods in a post, and what percentage of all members reference the keywords.

It has been taken back to the shelf and I'm still keeping an eye of what happens next.

But that’s how it is with applications created by other companies. You can never really know which is going to stay and which will disappear. You only know the asset you create yourself.

Plus, some diagrams look way complex and as if it is designed by programmers. I wish they were simpler and broken down a bit more. Plus, there were more screen shots.

Conclusion
Great find! For $19.50 and I felt I got more value than I expected. It's a gold mine. I found a book that I can go back to, again and again

The value in the Facebook Era outweighs anything that bugged me at first.

It is very detailed, with history and most of all, you'll walk away with a greater understanding on social networks, how they work especially with Facebook.

Plus, you also have case studies showing you practical examples and detailed explanatory.

Definitely a great investment and it will be a great asset to your library. I feel she put a lot of work, time and thinking. Most of all, she showed social proof.

Just don't try reading all in one day. You're head will spinning.

Adam Taha