Paul Stefan Ort

Review of 33 Million People in the Room

I recently read 33 Million People in the Room on O'Reilly's Safari. The book contains useful concepts for using social networking web applications for powerful networking. Social networking is sometimes critized by those who do not understand it as being a waste of time, a fad. While it is possible to use communication and collaboration platforms such as Twitter and Facebook for frivolous purposes, those tools are already providing valuable interactions and the prevalence of similar applications is likely to increase. The book is divided into eleven primary sections:

1. The Power of Social Networks
2. Getting On and Getting Started
3. Making Social Networks Work for You
4. The Strength of Microcelebrity
5. The Need for Authenticity
6. The Feedback Loop
7. Social Capital -> Cultural Capital -> Financial Capital
8. Virality and Communities: Opportunities in Distribution
9. Crowdsourcing and Cocreating: Opportunities in Production
10. Opening the Channels, Inside and Out: Opportunities in Communication
11. Success Is Where You Find It

The stories included in the book are useful for gaining ideas for leveraging social networking technologies for communication and accomplishment. The main question that must be answered in order to know how to use social networking technologies is: Do you have a remarkable cause to promote? There are many individuals and groups vying for attention. Do you really have something worth supporting? Most people are not interested in most things. If you focus on pursuing large but vaguely defined markets and do not have a compelling cause, you will fail. Interesting quotes from 33 Million People in the Room:

The new order favors those who network, create buzz, and promote their brand. Even if the buble bursts -- and we predict it will -- the power of social media to transform our businesses and soceity will only grow. -- Newsweek

Do business as if you were playing a game. Have fun, know the rules, and when it's time, make up your own. -- Guy Laliberte, Founder and CEO, Cirque du Soleil

There is no value in friend collecting, but there is a massive value in building your network... If the end goal is to put green in your pocket, don't friend collect, build a network. -- Lani Anglin-Rosales

Ideas are just raw materials. Take them! Use them! Ideas are the nucleus around which conversations and collaborations form. -- June Cohen, TED Conference

Word of mouth is a cultural accelerator. Just set up the architecture to engage audiences. -- Kenny Miller, Creative Director & EVP, MTV Network Global Digital Media

Most social change is driven not by influentials, but by easily influenced individuals influencing other easily influenced individuals. -- Duncan J. Watts, Peter Sheridan Dodds ("Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation," Journal of Consumer Research, December 2007)

Today's audience isn't listening at all -- it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. -- William Gibson, Award-Winning Author (Excerpt from WIRED Magazine, July 2005)

Productivity is second to connection: network productivity trumps individual productivity. -- Steve Boyd

In the new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the web but to the candidate who surrenders his (her) image to the clicking masses, the same way a rock guitarist might fall backward off the stage into the hands of an adoring crowd. -- Matt Bai, (New York Times Magazine, December 9, 2007, "The Web Users Campaign.")

You can find out more about Juliette Powell, the author, at 33millionpeople.com.