This is a book review of Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

How I got the book:

It was a Christmas present, on my list.  Seriously.

Background:

This book is a collaboration between Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, two prominent and respected bloggers/social media practitioners/professionals.  This book is about being a decent, supportive, and productive person online and using the resulting reputation to do good, if not great, things.  “Things” is a general term, but the book sets up a framework whereby you can position yourself to do many different kinds of things, whether they are for profit or not-for-profit, and enlist other people via social media to help you get things done while you do the same for them.

A Trust Agent, the subject of this book, is a talented person with a good reputation – and a useful network of friends, colleagues and contacts – who knows how to use the Web to get things done.  This is my definition, not the book’s, but I think I have it right.  The rise of the Trust Agent, as made possible through social media and other technology, seems like a reaction to the depersonalization of businesses, the muting of individual voices, and increasing stories of corporate malfeasance and political corruption.  As such, the book starts with a chapter discussing trust to establish the foundation for the material that follows.  It also talks about the power of the Web and social capital.

The book lists six main characteristics of Trust Agents and explains them in detail in an individual chapter.  They are:

• Make Your Own Game
• One of Us
• Archimedes Principle
• Agent Zero
• Human Artist
• Build an Army

The final chapter, The Trust Agent, wraps things up with further suggestions, advice, and thoughts about what you can do with the information in the book.

The strengths:

This book is a good read:  it’s written in an upbeat, humble and encouraging tone (didn’t want to use the phrase “non-threatening”, although that was the first thing that came to mind) and provides a lot of examples, ideas, anecdotes, and take-away activities that you can use in your work environment or in the causes you champion outside of your day job.  It has some of the same characteristics of Chris Brogan’s blogging but it’s not him:  it reads like a gestalt of both his and Julien’s writing styles.

The authors are also pretty clear about the intended audience for the book and they capture it well in the following sentence:  “….you’ve come to this book looking to improve yourself and, specifically, to improve how you do business over the Web.”  In a sense, it’s a starter social media handbook without calling itself that, but it’s not tool centric.  It’s like half of a book about how to use social media and Dan Zarrella’s book The Social Media Marketing Guide, which focuses much more on tools and technology, is the other half.  However, you could rightly argue that this is the more important half because it’s the human half.  To borrow a Star Trek analogy:  Brogan and Smith are like a combination of Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy (or perhaps Mr. Sulu) and Zarrella, perhaps unfairly, comes across as Mr. Spock and/or “Scotty”.  The celluloid heroes accomplish greater things when they work together, which is my somewhat awkward way of trying to explain why Trust Agents and The Social Media Marketing Guide seem like two halves of the same book.  But I digress.

I particularly enjoyed the Make Your Own Game section of the book.  I thought that the book also had some very wise advice about how customer service can, and should, evolve.  You also have to support anything that respects and empowers the individual, which Trust Agents does a good job of doing.  Finally, it’s full of lots of useful tips and ideas.

The areas for improvement:

This is a good book but, to me, not an earth-shattering or GREAT book.  My reaction is understandable because I’m not really the intended audience of the book and most of the material isn’t new to me.

However, I will say that the naming and the presentation of the six characteristics are a bit confusing to me.  For example, as I understand the concepts, there’s an awful lot of overlap between concepts like One of Us, Agent Zero, and Build an Army because they deal with networking in three phases:  belonging; becoming a connector or close to one; and leading the troops into battle (so to speak).  For that matter, the Archimedes Principle (leveraging other people’s strengths and connections to do much bigger work) and Human Artist (being a good listener, communicator, and generally a good citizen of the Web) also tie into the whole networking concept.  The lingo is somewhat familiar if you regularly read Chris’s blog, but I’m guessing that the book might have been intended to appeal to people who weren’t already readers.

The naming of the six characteristics seem like they were picked to make good sound bites or PowerPoint presentation slides so that people could remember them if they haven’t read the book yet, but they feel a bit clunky and jagged within the context of the same book.  I think I would have preferred it if they were all verbs or all nouns or if they were a little more straightforward and a bit less… lingoish.  The naming of Agent Zero (Be a Connector?), the Archimedes Principle (for some reason, I think the phrase Leverage, Leverage, Leverage would have been simpler and just as effective), and Human Artist (Etiquette or Rules of Engagement?) particularly seem to suffer.  It would have been better to use simpler, more direct terms for the six characteristics, particularly if this is a book for novices.  Maybe the authors are trying to invent and install a new vocabulary – time will tell if the terms they use in their book become widely adopted.

The last thing that I want to mention is really, really picky but… there were some spelling mistakes/editing problems that were disappointing to me.  It detracted from the book a bit.

Other points of interest:

I liked the SF/gamer/fantasy/comic book geekiness that was used in several places in the book.  I certainly didn’t expect to read any anecdotes about Ms. Pac Man, so there was some surprise factor there.

Verdict (out of 10): 8  (recommended; plenty of useful tips and it articulates many of the underlying themes/benefits of social media in one package)

My methodology for book reviews and affiliate links: I’ll provide an Amazon.com affiliate link (or other related affiliate link) for content if I think it’s worth buying and reading. If I don’t, I won’t provide an affiliate link. The affiliate link helps fund my content creation activities.

If you would like me to review YOUR eBook, book, or other content, please send me an E-Mail at markdykeman@gmail.com to get instructions on how to send your book or content to me. You’ll get my honest opinion about your book, either publically or privately.

I hope you’re enjoying this holiday season.  I am!

As you may know, I write book reviews at Broadcasting Brain (you can find links to the book reviews here).

I’ve got plenty of new reading material now that International Gift Day has arrived.  You can expect to see reviews of the following books in 2010:

Trust Agents – Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

All Marketers are Liars – Seth Godin

The Whuffie Factor – Tara Hunt

The Paradox of Choice – Barry Schwartz

The Opposable Mind – Roger Martin

The Age of Persuasion – Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant

These all look like great and useful reads.  I’ve got at least two other book reviews in the pipeline and I’m hoping to have many more to review in 2010.

If you would like me to read and review your book of choice (electronic or hard copy), please contact me at markdykeman of gmail with the period com and let’s make it happen.

This is a book review of On Writing by Stephen King.

How I got the book:

Bought it myself, years ago.

Background:

Stephen King is one of those writers who sells books at the level of Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, J. K. Rowling (on average, at least), and other popular writers. He’s published well over 40 novels and short story collections, lots of articles, and non-fiction books, including this one.

Earlier in his career, King was regarded as a hack:  some dude who knew how to crank out horror prose that readers would gobble up by the ton and whose books got adapted into movies of varying quality (no one will ever forget the movie adaptations of Carrie or The Shining; Maximum Overdrive, on the other hand…)

Here’s the thing, though: Continue reading ‘Book Review – On Writing – Stephen King’ »

I rarely read blogs that focus on either gender or health. It has nothing to do with the quality of the blogs or the importance of the subject matter; they just aren’t topics that mesh with my normal interests. However, there are two examples that have caught my eye during the past year. They are very different in tone and approach, but both are striking examples of passion and the power of blogging.

[EDIT:  please note that adult language and adult subjects are featured in these two blogs - they are not recommended for children and they may be a bit questionable for teens as well.]

Annie’s Rexia – I recently discovered that the author of HexMyEx (one of the blogs in my blog roll) had started another blog. I very much enjoyed HexMyEx for its wit and the somewhat surreal stories told by the author, but hadn’t checked in for some time. As funny and clever as the stories were, there was always a sense of snark and humor in the author’s prose which indicated a very strong person. Annie’s Rexia is a much more personal, honest, and disturbing read. I use the word disturbing because the author has gone through some pretty horrible times and still deals with related issues to this day. It’s bare, honest, and adult reading. The same wit and skill remains in the writing, but it’s a more honest and real blog. On one hand, it’s heavy reading and not for the faint of heart, mind, or soul. Yet, at the same time, it can be very uplifting to see a troubled person struggle to work through their problems and make progress. Annie is no super woman, but she’s definitely a hero and an inspiration to people who suffer from eating disorders and various forms of abuse. She’s married a great guy this year and has a couple of wonderful daughters, so I’m crossing my fingers that things continue to improve for her, despite that rocks that life continues to throw at her.

Shapely Prose – Shapely Prose is very, very different from Annie’s Rexia. The authors have a “take no prisoners” approach to spreading the word about fat acceptance and don’t you dare get in their way! Kate Harding, Fillyjonk, and Sweet Machine fight a never-ending war against people who look down on fat people (they insist on using the word “fat” instead of gentler words like overweight). Both the blog posts and commercials are fiery, passionate, and occasionally antagonistic. Definitely adult stuff here (note: the profanity only seems to fly in moments of extreme passion or anger, but it’s memorable when it comes out). There have been times when the bloggers haven’t been very tolerant of dissenting opinions and they can be very blunt in their assessment of people they don’t agree with. However, they do have important things to say and they cover their topic thoroughly. And kudos to them for the BMI Project, which features photos of many different women, including their BMI scores; they’re trying to show that the BMI (Body Mass Index), which powers so many diet and weight loss programs, has some serious flaws and limitations that need to be examined.

I can’t say which of these blogs is “right” or “better” than the other. However, I think it’s very interesting to look at how two different blogs deal with somewhat similar topics. Both blogs both speak to the power of blogging and social media as platforms to talk about important, occasionally personal topics. Passion and deep feeling may come from different places inside a person, but the blog is a great way to craft and deliver important writing about important topics.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll like either blog, but I highly recommend checking them both out. You might learn something new and you’ll definitely remember both blogs for a long, long time.

This is Blog Day 2008 and, in celebration of this, I’m featuring five bloggers from other countries (I’m excluding Canada and the US.)

I Started Something – by Long Zheng – this blogger was born in China, then moved to Australia in 1997, where he still resides. He blogs about PC technology, with a focus on Microsoft in particular. When you read his About page and some of his posts you’ll detect a somewhat sarcastic writing style which is pretty amusing. Nicely designed blog.

Delve Into The Mind of a Budding Blogger – by MeghnaK - I’ve come across this young lady from India via StumbleUpon in the past. She says she’s 14 years old and is a very enthusiastic and dedicated writer. I think this young blogger will become a force to reckon with as she continues her work.

Foreign Dispatches – by Abiola Lapite – this blogger is apparently based somewhere in Africa, although he says he spent many years living in the UK. He writes about a variety of topics and is a very good photographer.

D for Disorientation – by Pablo – this blogger writes about current events and politics in Argentina, including the English translation of an article called The Musketeers of Redistribution (Los mosqueteros de la redistribución). Definitely focuses on politics and current events.

The Environmental Blog from the Grumpy Old Man – by Eddie deClercq - well, the title pretty much sums it up. Some interesting thoughts on the environmental movement and discussion of electric cars.

Why not have a look at these blogs? And, for that matter, you can also do tag searches in directories like BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, and Technorati. Search by country to see information about bloggers from other countries.

Again, Happy Blog Day!

BlogDay2008

Back at the former blog home I had been featuring bloggers with a short write up every Friday. Kinda cool, kinda fun. Found some interesting blog ideas. I think some people liked them.

Unfortunately, I have been occupied with other things and I don’t have a review this week. In fact, I might be skipping this feature for the rest of December for similar reasons.

HOWEVER, if you’d really like a review, you can E-Mail me or leave a comment here and I will be more than happy to oblige.

Happy Friday!

(P.S. – Mimzie, this means no haiku either.)