Rating: 
Summary: Where's the beef...
Review: This book starts great. The Author starts with some great insights on how the "business place" will be effected by the coming of the real information age, but instead of pulling all his ideas together he babbles on about his opinions. This book needed more data and concrete examples.
Rating:
Summary: Love it or hate it but don't ignore it
Review: This is one of those books that people either love or hate. My guess is that its the delivery people don't like, not the message. Personally, I tend to think its just plain common sense but I won't pretend I had a clue before reading. After reading, its painfully obvious. There are several extremely valuable realizations about how the internet changes business (and much more) which you likely ought to consider as you think about your business. If you want better insight into what is so exciting and empowering about the internet for customers this is worth the read. Some of you can probably get enough by just reading the manifesto. Status quo corporations, you need to be on your guard (chances are you're not reading this anyway). I would have preferred a little less 60's "revolution is in the air" hype. If you're looking for a revolution, take another hit of acid and wait. This book simply describes what inevitably happens when better communication and information is available in a free market economy. I also think the book could have been written in about 30 pages but those 30 pages were powerful enough to deserve 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Old business paradigms are out the window! The web rules!
Review: This thought-provoking book actually was one of the catalytic influences which dynamited me out of my complacency in terms of my own existing web site. Just like Dr. Martin Luther, posting his similarly disruptive "95 theses" on t"he Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" in 1517, Mssrs. Levine, Locke, Searls, and Weinberger put a definitive stop to the notion of "business as usual" in the newly "wired" world. It kind of reminds me of a next door neighbor I used to have: he predicted that the internet would be "a fad just like CB radio." In a pig's eye!
The co-authors assert that "markets are converstaions" and that they "consist of human beings, not demographic sectors." Much like this site, with the numerous hyperlinks, connecting YOU, the user with more information, logically organized, than you would be able to construct yourself, the authors also assert that "hyperlinks subvert heirarchy." In other words, if the shortest distance between you and the knowledge that you need is a short clickable link on the world wide web, executed by the 1/10th of an inch movement of your index finger on a mouse, the "priesthood of experts" fall.
This is an "in your face" book that should be read by EVERY entrepreneur, EVERY fee-for-service practitioner of ANY profession, and EVERYONE connected with modern networks and the internet. You will never look at the world, or business, the same way afterwards. And you will recognize that "eye candy" web sites with the same old advertising messages will no longer work.
| 
