I am reading the book "Grouped" by Facebook's Paul Adams.

Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends Are the Key to Influence on the Social Web [Book] by Paul Adams in Books

$18 online, $30 nearby

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By Paul Adams - Pearson Education, Limited (2011) - Paperback - 216 pages - ISBN 0321804112

The web is being rebuilt around people. From travel to news to commerce, businesses are reorienting their efforts around people - around the social behavior of their customers and potential customers. As we traverse across the web, we'll know which of our friends prefer different brands, and this information will be surfaced to us at the most opportune moments - when we're deciding what to buy. In order to be successful in this new social web, businesses will need to understand how people are influenced by their social network. How the people closest to them influence them the most, and how it's more important to focus on small connected groups of friends rather than looking for overly influential individuals. This book pulls together the latest research on influence and social behavior to describe how people are connected, and how ideas and brand messages spread through social networks.

This book is short and has some interesting Quick Tips.

One entry on Paul's blog is here.

Five major shifts
By Paul Adams in Musing

Lately, I’ve been talking to people about five major shifts that I see happening. Each is big enough to warrant a post of its own, so over the next few days I’ll write about each individually, and then write a post about what it means to think of them in combination. I’ll link to all from this post. In the meantime, here are the five major shifts:

1. The amount of information we can access is increasing exponentially.

2. The web is being rebuilt around people, rather than being built around content.

3. For the first time in humanity, social interaction, and influence, are measurable.

4. Technology is driving a large increase in understanding how we make decisions, and it’s not how we assumed.

5. Mobile technologies (phones, tablets, etc.) will change society in ways we can’t yet predict.

I am biased seeing these five shifts, because I have been busy with some friends to build a service that is adapting to all of these.

Are you ready for the five major shifts?