“Click” follows in the tradition of books by Malcolm Gladwell and the authors of “Freakonomics”, by analysing modern day trends and extracting meaning behind society’s behaviour through the use of data and statistics. There a number of different topics discussed in the book ranging from porn and fashion to phobias and rock bands. In that respect it’s readable by anyone who uses the internet and wonders what we – the collective "we" are doing online. The uniqueness of the book is that Tancer’s findings are based upon search engine data and all of his conclusions are drawn from how people spend their time on the internet. He is well known for telling his audiences, “I love data”. In fact, it’s a clever plug for his Hitwise blog, http://www.ilovedata.com.
The downside of the book is that Tancer covers a lot of ground, he also chooses to focus on very specific examples and doesn’t always provide enough of the bigger picture. Overall though, I enjoyed “Click” and would recommend it for anyone who is curious about how online data can teach us about our society as a whole and in some cases why it fails to lead to accurate conclusions.
Click is published by Harper Collins and is available from Amazon by clicking here.
