Ten great books to understand Web 2.0 for Thanksgiving

Everybody knows what Web 2.0 is all about, right?

Well, judging by some of the conversations I have had recently, I don't think so - I think a lot of people have picked up the first level fluff, maybe read Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 webpage, and got a few of the buzzwords generators fired up - thus contributing to the prevalent view that its all hype spewed by PR bots.

There is a lot of hype, sure - however, there is actually a whole lot of valid theory behind all this, the Webworld has changed in the last 2-3 years mainly because Big Bandwidth makes it a lot easier and cheaper to do "stuff", and lots of connected users make it economic to build services now that were just not feasible in Web 1.0.

So, for those who need to Do Something this Thanksgiving, or at least need an excuse to escape to Borders for a coffee and a read, here are 10 books I like because they are fairly easy to absorb, but give a good view of whats going on in the Webways:

1. User Generated Content - The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

This is a good roundup of the way ease of search allows one to find niche content, thus driving the trend toward user generated content. Much to disagree with, you will find yourself furiously annotating, but a good book for all that.

2. Search - The Google Story by David Vise

Focuses on Google, but the sections on emerging search techniques are useful (being a geek I am fascinated by all the stuff around the Taxonomies, Algorithms and Metadata of advanced search, but most of these books are so dry they make accounting seem sexy.)

3. Social Network Technology - Linked, the New Science of Networks by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

- In my view the best book about how scale free and small world networks work, both for computers and human society. There are others, but this is my favourite.

4. Social Media - The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

- Still the most comprehensive and easy to read book on how social networks operate in human society.

5. Open Source - Free Software for Dummies by Mary Leete

- This is not a tome on the Open Source movement, its a DiY manual - a great Starter Kit for all the stuff you Web Workers need to go Open Source at home. Once you've got Open Office, Mozilla and GIMP up on your Linux you will never look back, you are a Free Netizen and can walk tall. Why is it Great - because my 12 year old pretty much set up his computer (except for the Linux) with it, and gained the confidence to get a lot more Open Source stuff for himself.

6. Online Advertising & Marketing - Got Game by John C Beck and Mitchell Wade

- Ok, this isn't about online advertising per se, but it is about the emerging 16 - 34 year old generation who are the early adopters of much of these services and in my view understanding them is the key.

7. The Closed Loop Web 2.0 - Emergence by Steven Johnson

- a systemic view of what closed loop networks look like in various spheres, and damn thought provoking. There are longer books, this is a good pocket read.

8. The Digital Home Environment - Home Hacking Projects for Geeks by Eric Faulkner and Tony Northrup

- this isn't a sociological study or a futuregadgetology, its a Geeks Book of Things To Do - I put it in here because even if you have no intention of doing any stuff like this it gives you a view as to what is possible at hobbyist level right now, to set that imagination flowing. (Rationale - 10 years ago I thought Virtual Reality was cool, and the best book I found on it was a Garage VR cookbook on stuff to do at home - much more instructive than all the sociobabble books out at the time in my opinion)

9. The Mobile Web 2.0 - Mobile Web 2.0 by Ajit Jaokar and Tony Fish

- more of a "brain scrape to paper" of many of the current trends and thinking on Mobile Web than a structured book per se as the area is evolving so fast, but well worth the read nonetheless - not least because I wrote the section on Podcasting in the book and Tony is a friend plug plug

10. A Primer for Web 2.0 Startups - Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham

- This is a Sun Tzu rather than a Clausewitz for startups, its a more-subtle-than-it-first-seems book by a Renaissance Man who happens to know a lot about software, and (in the subtext) a lot about what it takes to build a good startup, which they did with ViaWeb. And he knows his Monet from his Manet.

All the Web 2.0 memes are in these books ( now how many people know that Memes were actually invented as a concept by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene ).

I haven't found a great book on the evolution of webservices per se, though I think Hackers and Painters does a good job, nor have I read a really good book on the evolution of mass media into an interactive world. Honourable mentions to Search, The Tipping Point, All Marketers are Liars, Six Degrees and Critical Mass....there are many other books I could put in but for various reasons didn't, usually because the one I have was the one I found most stimulating (and/or recent), and as we are all bloggers there seemed little point in putting blog books in.

Comments welcome......................

Next week...10 books from Web 1.0 that have stood the test of time