Web 2.0 Heroes – A book review

• Tweet

• Tweet

The inside jacket of the book states:

“Web 2.0 is not about mass marketing. It’s about actually understanding the masses. And it’s not about controlling the message. It’s about engaging the audience and actually hearing what they have to say. It’s about enabling creativity, realizing a culture of contribution, and putting the user in control”.

Web 2.0 Heroes by Bradley Jones presents a series of edited interviews from a number of leading figures from within the Web 2.0 sphere (See below).  In most cases the interviewee is a person closely related to the company’s web strategy. The book builds on the Web 2.0 theme and asks. “What’s is coming next?”. A few of the interviewees discuss their thoughts on the Semantic Web and reflect on developing areas such as  Software plus Services (S+S).

Overall, the book presents a good perspective and is just over 250 pages.  I did enjoy the large number of quotes which are highlighted throughout the book. However, I would have liked to have seen some insights from the author, adding to the commentary of the interviewees. Bradley’s voice is somewhat missing! Nevertheless, an interesting read for anyone with an interest in the Web 2.0 sphere.

The Web 2.0 heroes include:

· Max Mancini – eBay

· Alan Meckler – Internet.com

· Eric Engleman – Bloglines

· Gina Bianchini – Ning

· Dorion Carroll – Technorati

· Raju Vegesna – Zoho

· Richard MacManus – Read/Write Web & Web 2.0 WorkGroup

· TJ Kang – ThinkFree

· Patrick Crane – LinkedIn

· Shaun Walker – DotNetNuke

· Biz Stone – Twitter

· Seth Steinberg – Meebo

· Joshua Schachter – Del.icio.us

· Ranjith Kumaran – YouSendIt

· Garrett Camp – StumbleUpon

· Rodrigo Madanes – Skype

· Rod Smith – IBM Corporation

· Tim Harris – Microsoft Corporation

· Bob Brewin & Tim Bray – Sun Microsystems

· Michele Turner – Adobe Corporation