This is a helpful book for navigating the waves of social networking. It’s a quick read, with useful links and helpful tactics for the non-geek to leverage the web in marketing their business.

Unfortunately, any book of this sort quickly becomes outdated - social technologies ebb and flow that quickly! A *huge* portion of the book is dedicated to MySpace, for example. One tiny paragraph is devoted to Facebook. As I am a Facebook user and don’t bother with MySpace, that means several of this book’s chapters are useless for me.

LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and all other big networking sites also rate a tiny blurb, no more. Twitter isn’t even mentioned! This is a 2007 book and already out of date.

Useful chapters include setting up your website, starting to blog, and hooking your brand into the blogosphere. A few pages cover developing your blog content over the long haul. Using Technorati, Digg and Del.icio.us is touched upon.

I found the passage on building a guest column interesting. The viral video/podcasting chapter has decent, albeit bare bones, basics. I also appreciated the nuggets on using Amazon, analyzing traffic stats and monitizing your site.

Overall, anyone already familiar with the basics of MySpace, tagging, developing a blog, using Amazon’s review system, setting up RSS and so on won’t learn much from this slim volume. On the other hand, this book offers an easy introduction to web 2.0 marketing that social network newbies won’t find intimidating.

Worth a read and helpful for small business owners who want to get their toes wet in the blogosphere.