Have you ever thought about snagging some books on this crazy new medium they call Social Media? Well, Jurgen Appelo compiled a great list of the top books in the space. The science behind his list is quite fascinating. He created this list using six criteria: number of Google hits; number of Amazon ratings; average Amazon rating; number of GoodReads ratings, average GoodReads rating and the release date.

To see the whole list head over to Jurgen’s site, MellowBillow. You will never remember the name of his blog, so make sure to bookmark it.

The top ten books to own in Social Media and Web 2.0 are:

Here is how he did all of the calculations.

Doing the Calculations
When it was time to do the calculations, I checked the number of reader’s ratings on Amazon, and I ranked the books according to these results (= a measure of quantity). I also checked the average Amazon ratings, and I ranked the books according to these results (= a measure of quality). Consequently I did exactly the same with the ratings on GoodReads, checking both total number of ratings and averages.

I then checked the number of Google hits for each of the books, and I ranked them accordingly (= a measure of popularity). Last of all, I ranked the books according to their age since their first release date. (When Amazon and GoodReads reported different first release dates, I used the oldest one.) I decided to use this metric because I think newer books with X ratings should be awarded higher positions on my list than older books with the same X ratings. After all, having collected those same X ratings in a shorter time span is a better achievement.

Finally, I took the six rankings, waved a bit with my wizard’s wand, drank a lot of coffee, and re-calculated everything into a final ranking. This resulted in the list you now have before you.

Again, go check it out at MellowBillow Top 100 Social Media Books, . Great list Jurgen! Thanks for your hard work!

This is a recent Slideshare presentation that I discovered by Jason Baer that he created for the Social Media Club of Arizona. It has some very interesting stats and thought lines to consider. If you have a few, I recommend checking it out.

Alright, we’ve decided to take it to the streets, so from henceforth, we will be blogging at least once a week.

We have been so busy on client sites and marketing that sometimes you are unable to make time for your own blog.  But this changes now!

Look forward to great content and new research data.