Serendipity35

This will be the fourth summer that I will teach my graduate class in designing social media. Every year, I have asked online for suggestions of book (not usually "textbooks") for the class which is part of the MS in Professional and Technical Communication at NJIT. Students in the PTC program tend to be (or intend to be) designers, technical writers, media & social media managers, but I always get a few students from the management, communications, media, IT and design majors.

The course examines how organizations use social media as communication tools for marketing, education & training and community building and students do social media surveys and create strategy proposals for actual organizations.

Though the bulk of the daily, short readings are current and available online, I also ask each student to select an outside book that focuses on an area of interest to their goals. they share content from that book when appropriate into the discussions online so that the class gets content from a number of other books.

Making the reading selection process itself a social media project seems appropriate. Books and readings in social media go out of date so quickly that it seems foolish to rely on a traditional textbook.

I am also a proponent of Open Educational Resources, especially open textbooks. Having put two sons through college not so long ago, I am also very cognizant of the cost of textbooks. There are lots of open texts (again, textbook may be a misnomer) and I try to use those when possible.

As general texts for the class, I will include three texts that are available free online. These three are not strictly about social media, but each contains ideas that I find provocative to the discussion. I will point students to specific chapters or sections and I feel a lot better about doing that knowing that there will be no cost to them.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler has made the entire book and additional materials available for free download at cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation, by Jono Bacon [free PDF download]

Jonathan Zittrain's book, The Future of the Internet - and how to stop it is also a free pdf download under a Creative Commons license.

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Outside Reading Book Suggestions for DESIGNING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
The first section of the list below includes books I have read and found useful and that students have used. The second section includes titles suggested by readers of this blog, colleagues and titles found, read and recommended by my students in past years. You'll notice that many of the titles are not specifically on social media or are on some area within social media (such as marketing or design).

If you would like to suggest a book related to an aspect of social media, please do so by adding a comment below.

1. Virtual Communities- Felicia Wu Song  "Does contemporary Internet technology strengthen civic engagement and democratic practice? This book seeks to understand the technology on its own terms, focusing on how the technological and organizational configurations of online communities frame our contemporary beliefs and assumptions about community and the individual. It analyzes key structural features of thirty award-winning online community websites."
2. Designing mLearning: Tapping into the Mobile Revolution for Organizational Performanceby Clark Quinn is being used this summer in NJIT's PTC 650 - ELEARNING DESIGN FOR MOBILE
3. What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest Growing Company in the History of the World by Jeff Jarvis and also his second book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live
4. Power Friending - Amber MacArthur
5. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations - Clay Shirky
6. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies - Charlene Li
7. Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations - Amy Shuen
8. Designing for the Social Web - Joshua Porter
9. The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future - S. Craig Watkins
10. Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone - patterns, principles, and best practices for starting a social website - has more of a design focus rather than current trends (so it might be relevant longer).
11. Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone. - Mitch Joel - a business focus on using Net marketing, esp. free tools and services
12. Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee ~ Web 2.0 for the enterprise
13. The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein - using twitter in a personal or company context
14. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr
15. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, by Sherry Turkle
16. Virtual Communities (Digital Formations) by Felicia Wu Song
17. The Social Media Handbook: Rules, Policies, and Best Practices to Successfully Manage Your Organization's Social Media Presence, Posts, and Potential - Nancy Flynn
18. There is another book similarly titled The Social Media Management Handbook (subbtitled "Everything You Need To Know To Get Social Media Working In Your Business")
19. also several other social media handbooks specific to different areas
20. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation - Tim Brown
21. The Cluetrain Manifesto - though ten years old, the authors' 95 theses about the networked marketplace probably make more sense today. Observations about business in America and how the Internet will continue to change it.
22. Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site -  by Gavin Bell
23. The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success - Safko
24. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins.  This book puts web 2.0 technologies and trends into a much larger historical context of participatory culture. 
    

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The following titles are ones that I have not read, but that have been recommended by my students and others.


25. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture by Jean Burgess and Joshua Green
26. Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (and Other
    Social Networks) by Dave Kerpen  I am very interested in the art/science of creating content that grabs large audiences. I chose this book because it focuses on creating content as well as how to retain your audience and keep them engaged with your brand. I may also have been taken in by the Facebook thumbs up on the front cover, telling my subconscious that this was the book to buy.
    
27. The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out - Christopher Barger
    
28. The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More by
    Kip Bodnar and Jeffrey Cohen.
    
29. The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future by S. Craig
    Watkins  Unlike the other books that have been posted about so far, the book I chose is not really about marketing with social media. It is more
    about the culture of social media and people’s use of it, specifically users in their late teens and early twenties. The author interviewed a number of young people about the ways that they use social media and their feelings and attitudes towards it.
30. Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
31. Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.
    
32. The Science of Marketing: When to Tweet, What to Post, How to Blog, and Other Proven Strategies by Dan Zarrella - a scientific approach to the way businesses and brands approach marketing. It uses a combination of marketing, statistical, and psychological research to explain why and, more importantly, how, companies should adapt marketing strategies such as blogging, social media, email marketing, and webinars.
    
33. Ken Auletta - Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
34. Shel Israel- Twitterville
35. Chris Brogan and Julian Smith Trust Agents
36. The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
37. David Meerman Scott - New Rules of Marketing & PR
38. Paul Gillin - The New Influencers
    
39. Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge - Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
    
40. David Kirkpatrick - The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that's Connecting the World
    
41. Bob Garfield - Chaos Scenario
42. David Meerman Scott - World Wide Rave
    
43. The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business - "whuffie" is Hunt's word for social capital on the Web
    
44. Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together by Felicia Wu Song
    
45. On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders - Michael A. Banks
46. I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy - Lori Andrews
    
47. Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices - Christopher Locke
48. The Social Media Business Equation: Using Online Connections to Grow Your Bottom Line - Eve Mayer Orsburn
    
49. Return on Relationship - Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose
    
50. Navigating Social Media Legal Risks: Safeguarding your Business - Robert McHale
    
51. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture - Jean Burgess, Joshua Green, Henry Jenkins, and John Hartley
    
52. Wide Open Privacy: Strategies for the Digital Life - J.R. Smith and Siobhan MacDermott
    
53. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age - Manuel Castells