Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture

by David Kline and Dan Burstein

Featuring a resource guide to the Top 100 Blogs, this title is a timely exploration of the influence of online journals and commentary that, according to Bill Gates, are the biggest thing since the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593151411
• ISBN13: 9781593151416
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: CDS Books
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

An extremely useful and informative book on an important social trend

This is a collection of short pieces, some written especially for the book and some reprinted from other sources. The authors have also interviewed a number of the more famous bloggers or other people analyzing the trend. This variety makes it an extremely useful introduction to the phenomenon. It certainly isn't a gripping read, but the ideas are fascinating. This is not a how-to book, except in the sense of explaining some of the capabilities of the format, and exploring what makes a good or bad blog. Kline and Burstein have a fairly balanced view of blogs, expecting them to be quite significant, but acknowledging that they cannot be expected to creat a new utopia, and that the future is very much still forming. The book is somewhat slanted, but not uncritically, in favor of blogs, perhaps because the authors feel that love them or hate them, they're here to stay. They point out that the purposes of blogging are age-old, although the technology now allows communication on a grand scale. The book acknowledges that most blogs are personal, i.e., intended mainly for friends and family (although still open to public view), but they concentrate on the publically oriented blogs, especially the political and the business. Fortunately, having gotten me all gung ho on reading blogs, the book has appendixes giving guidance to various blogs of great general interest. They also have an blog updating the see future of blogs (see productwiki, below). I recommend this to everyone, especially those who are not currently familiar with blogs.

Every Blogger should read and the public should know

This book review was a blog post on http://jimestill.blogspot.com/ I know a lot of bloggers read blogs. One awesome book that is a must read for bloggers is "Blog! How the newest revolution is changing politics, business and culture" by David Kline and Dan Burstein. It talks of the power and influence of blogs. It uses political examples. Through these examples we can learn what good blogging is (honest, open) and what it is not (poorly written, blatant marketing). It talks about freedom of the press and countries and companies that try to suppress blogs. It also warns and gives examples of blogs that share insider or confidential information and what happens. Most of this advice is just "don't be stupid". To quote from it: "..most people - or at least most of the media's coverage of business issues in blogging - are missing the fact that the real excitement here is not how much money business can make from blogging, but how dramatically blogging will reshape the world of business from top to bottom and create new sources of competitive advantage for firms that learn how to use this new medium intelligently." "Bloggers not only tend to be more passionate about their interests and hobbies than other people, they also have marketplace influence far beyond their numbers". Much of the book consists of interviews with famous people who blog. It asks their view of the Blogshpere and what is happening. This is a highly inspirational read for anyone who blogs. We live in revolutionary times and as bloggers (and blog readers) we see history being made. We are truly cutting edge. The world is changing before our eyes. As A. J. Liebling a great 20th century journalist said "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one". With blogs, anyone can.

Blogging and street cred

David Kline and Dan Burstein have been around for decades as respected author/journalists. They may not have great "street cred" among bloggers, but I've never expected a crime reporter to commit murder before writing about it and I certainly wouldn't trust a political writer more because he were a politician. This book is a critical investigation into the many ways that blogging is rapidly changing our world -- from culture to business to science to politics -- and in the arena of such trend-synthesis, the author/editors reek of cred. The essays are far-reaching and insightful, and the analysis pulls them all together clearly and cohesively. A virtual Bible of the Blogosphere.

Useful book on blogging

I thought this was a great book. So many people these days talk about blogs as though they are the answer to everyone¹s prayers or written by rightwing nuts. This book showed that the blogosphere, like society, is full of people from all walks of life, and it showed just how useful blogging can be in the worlds of politics, business and culture. There¹s a little bit of something for everyone in here. I admit that I skipped a few of the business interviews when I found nothing there for me but if you run a large or small business I¹m sure you¹ll find those parts interesting. My personal favorites were the politics and culture essays, especially the interview with Michael Chabon¹s wife Ayelet Waldman. The introductory essays were also good giving a balanced introduction to each of the chapters and all of the commentary pieces pulled from newspapers and magazines were entertaining. The book had a tendency to repeat itself slightly with different interviewees saying the same thing in different ways, but I suppose you can¹t help that when you are interviewing so many different people. On the whole I would say this looks like one of the best books out there on blogging at the moment.

Goes beyond the "me too - how to" books on blogging

David and Dan really got it right with blog!. They take a meta view of the blogosphere looking at the political, business and cultural implications of blogs as a metaphor for the changes taking place in how organizations interact with their constituents.