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Summary: Member Generated Content??
Review: Great book, but I find the buzz about content so broad, it is in some ways meaningless. Can we depend on member generated content? What about the quality, richness & validity of this content? Should site organizers be able to monitor forums of member generated content? Will they have to plant content that appears to be written by members? What if members either don't contributue, or do so in a way that isn't valuable to the overall goal of the site? Any recommendations for more reading in the area of member generated content?
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Summary: Easy to follow
Review: Everybody seems to be an expert when it comes to internet commerce and marketing. I've read a lot of junk on this topic and much of what passes for new information is simply a rehash of some fairly lightweight (and doubtful) information. However, Net Gain is a refreshing departure from the norm. The authors focus on specifically why, what, and how the internet should be ncorported into your business. If you're interested in understanding how to do it right, I recommend this book.
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Summary: Educators for the 21st century should read Net Gain.
Review: Because it is a clear reporting of the online phenomenon and the development of communities, the authors of Net Gain have much to share with educators as they face the 21st century. Can the communities designed by business for profit be models for the 21st century educational marketplace? The psychology and sociology of the internet as applied to the business world is relevant to the education world. Public education is struggling with its "marketing" now and the customer base has not been satisfied with the traditional product for sometime. As schools look to the business model for answers, and businesses look to the "net" for market share...can schools be far behind?
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Summary: Finally an explanation of how to make a profit on the Web
Review: I read this book pretty much cover-to-cover and found it very thought provoking. It does a great job of explaining the opportunities in creating "Virtual Communities". Virtual communities are described as areas where a group of users sharing common interests gather to learn about and discuss information. These communities create an information source that shifts power from the vendors to the customers. Longer term, vendors can capitalize on this community by selling directly to the community members, and more importantly by using the customer interaction to create word-of-mouth advertising. Who are you more likely to trust: another user of the product or some sleazy salesman? Up until this book, I have seen little written on the longer term business models on how to make money by aggregating users. This book will explain the rationale of why there is enormous value in web sites with a large base of users. The book has a very interesting chart which describes the return on various strategic investments for a startup trying to build a virtual community. The conclusion was that far and away the most important investments were vendor acquisition (i.e. companies wanting to sell products to the members of the community), member-generated content, and member acquisition. Interestingly, usage fees for the site had an enormous long-term negative impact for the site (despite their short term ability to generate revenue). There are a couple of points that I think were not well addressed in this book: 1) I don't believe that the authors make a compelling argument about how to sell the first vendors on the advantages of being a part of the virtual community. From my experience, vendors don't sign up for a new product or service because "that's where the market is going". They need to be convinced that there's an advantage for them to be first, and that reason was not adequately described in the book. 2) The book states the importance of member-generated content as a way to build up the community and keep traffic coming to the site. It was never clear to me from the book how to do this through a commercially sponsored newsgroup versus the already existing Usenet newsgroups today (which already have a pre-existing and active community). For instance, there are already many Usenet newsgroups related to Travel. Why should potential travelers use a commercially sponsored site instead of a Usenet group? Clearly there are sites that have been successful at creating their own newsgroup areas so I believe that there are justifiable reasons. I'm just not sure what those reasons are and the book didn't explain them. Overall, an interesting book and well worth your time.
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Summary: Great and concrete!!!
Review: I am a german student who uses this book for research on a course called "Cyber Entrepreneur" where we are supposed to establish an internet market idea and come up with a business plan and a complete concept. Since our project revolves around a virtual community, this book helps tremendously to understand the concept of virtual communities as well as show in a specific way how to establish one and how much it costs. I am glad I read this book!!! Besides, it is well written and easy to understand, even for me as a german!!!!!
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Summary: An interesting, but flawed, book
Review: Net Gain is an interesting book in many ways, particularly in its (I believe accurate) proposal that the Internet, and virtual communities in general, are already beginning to empower customers at the expense of vendors. In other ways the book is flawed. It proposes that commercially organised virtual communities are "Increasing Returns Business". This may be true, but the arguments presented lack intellectual rigour. We are presented with some quantitative predictions based on "dynamic computer models" about which we learn little, other than that they appear to be based on the multiplicative combination of a set of hypothetical virtuous circles. Elsewhere in the book it is widely assumed that members of virtual communities will be happy to supply information to community organisers in order that they (the members) may be sold to on an individual basis. My gut feeling is that many people would not be prepared to do this. It would, in effect, be a voluntary transfer of power back to the vendor. A third criticism is that the book does not clearly distinguish between bulletin boards set up by specific vendors as an aid to marketing their own products and multi-vendor communities set up by a third party which effectively pit one vendor against another. This lack of clarity makes some of the arguments difficult to assess. The book is clearly thought provoking but, in the last analysis, it does not live up to its hype.
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Summary: Stimulating book, if you can stand McKinsey-speak
Review: Discounting for the excruciating style of management gurus in particular and McKinsey consultants in particular - the breathlessness, the weird taxonomies and the unnerving confidence in their own ingenuity - there is much to enjoy in this book. The logic of "virtual community" as a recipe for success on the Internet unassailable; even if there are inherent contradictions between the authors' definition of a "virtual community" and its role as a "business model". The authors' lack of economics qualifications is also painfully obvious. Nevertheless, for those interested in doing business on the 'net, there are many good suggestions; for those in a position to create a true "virtual community", the book provides a model worth aspiring to.
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Summary: An excellent book on virtual community
Review: An excellent book for anyone planning to develop and run a virtual community. This book deals with both technical and economics aspects of developing and running a virtual community. I liked the part where the book explains how a long term gain from a virtual community will be a hinderance to short term gains. It also explains how a very carefully planned cashflow plan is required to develop a virtual community. The book talks about the cumulative effects of various parameters which will lead to exponential profit increase once the virtual community reaches a critical size. It is surprising to know how certain key members of a virtual community can keep the community together.
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Summary: A Left Hook to the Conventional Model of Business
Review: Net Gain posits a very deep business model, in direct contradiction to prevailing paradigms. Most executives have no idea how radically the world will change through electronic commerce. If they don't read this book soon, it will be too late for many of them to recover. I predict that at least one quarter of the dominant bricks-and-mortar category-killer retailers will be displaced by virtual communities. If you're skeptical, consider my experience trying to purchase Sony's WebTV+. I thought I would try to order it online, through Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Guess what? All their web sites do is direct you to their local stores. So, I call my local Best Buy and find out they are out of stock, but to place a special order I must nevertheless make the trip to their store (to give them my address and credit card number!). So, I drive for 25 minutes to get to the store, waste 10 minutes finding someone who can help me, waste 25 minutes at customer service just to place an order, and spend an additional 25 minutes returning home. The whole trip took an hour and a half. Guess what? When WebTV arrives at their store, I have to go back to pick it up -- they won't deliver it to my house! Best Buy is widely considered the ascendant leader in bricks-and-mortar. Could a virtual community with online ordering deliver greater value at lower cost than Best Buy? You bet. It's only a matter of time before consumers pull the plug on this nonsense. In fact Best Buy is selling the engine of their own destruction: once Sony can reach me directly through my TV, they don't need Best Buy, Circuit City, or anyone else to push their products. Virtual communities will displace whole retail categories, to the benefit of their customers. Net Gain describes why and how this will happen. Is anyone at Best Buy reading this book?
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Summary: An Essential Read for Community Developers
Review: This book is destined to be a classic in the field of virtual community development. Others may expand on the work of Hagel and Armstrong, but most important things community managers need to know are contained in Net Gain.
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