The social network business plan : 18 strategies that will create great wealth by David A. Silver

Book Review. Rating 8 out of 10

This is a quite interesting book, about the future and business perspectives of the social media revolution which we are witnessing. The very big concept which Silver is prophesizing, is that in a very short time, 2011, we will see a massive rise of a type social networks which Silver terms as "Recommender Social Networks". This is a social network where consumers share information about goods, in the form a Rating, Reviewing and Recommending. According to Silver this type of social network will have an absolutely massive influence upon todays business model: Today the brands control the consumers via advertisement and marketing to buy the goods they produce. But in the future the recommender social network will use the collective ratings of their members to guide the consumers as to what to buy. The result of this shift will be an increased power to the consumer and a lowering of prices (because advertisement today is a considerable expense and with the rise of the recommender social network, advertisement and marketing will loose it's controlling power). In the future the recomender social network will be the place to introduce new products. As examples of recommender social networks which are already here Silver mentions http://www.yelp.com/ and http://www.angieslist.com . Silver also comes with tricks about how to start a succesfull social network. The trick is to be a pain solver for a group of people, he come with some examples from the medical world, there is http://sermo.com/ which allows doctors to share information, but at the same time the owner of network sell the anonymized conversations of the doctors to the medical companies. Another examples is http://www.patientslikeme.com/ which allows patiens to share information. There is really, really many money to be made in social networks, actually it is by large much of the money used in advertisement and marketing today which instead will flow to the social networks!