This book provides 20 profiles of people who influenced the growth of the digital landscape. The profiles cover a wide spectrum of the digital world, including digital advertising, search, social media, metrics/analytical tools, virtual reality, political campaigns, online music, crowdsourcing, and digital promotion to e-commerce, and more. At the end of the book, there is a chapter that discusses the role that emerging areas of the world (China, India and the Middle East) are playing and will play in the future development of the digital space followed by a summary chapter that presents lessons learned from the digital pioneers profiled in the book. A list of key terms or “jargon busters” is also included.
Each profile tells a brief story about the individual pioneer and his/her unique role in creating and shaping the digital environment. The profiles are easy to read and tell interesting stories about how each person got started, their passions, and their contributions to the digital landscape. Some of the people found their niche by developing their own companies and others did so by working for companies founded by others. At the end of each profile is a list of “sound bytes” that offer suggestions for aspiring pioneers followed by a list of suggestions for further reading.
Profiles of the following people and their respective companies or areas of influence are included in the book – Thomas Gensemer – MyBO and Obama's 2008 Presidential Campaign, June Cohen – HotWired and TED.com, Denzyl Feigelson – iTunes Advisor and Artists Without a Label, Vanessa Fox – Google and Nine By Blue, Gurbaksh Chahal – ClickAgents and BlueLithium, Jaron Lanier – Virtual Realting and Microsoft Research, Angel Chen – OgilivyOne China, John Winsor – Victors & Spoils, Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Land, Alex Bogusky/Bob Cianfrone – Burger King's Subservient Chicken, Avinash Kaushik – Digital marketing evangelist and Google, Carolyn Everson – MTV Networks and Facebook, Malcolum Poynton – Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, Qi Lu – Yahoo!, Microfit and Bing, Ajaz Ahmed – AKQA, Martha Lane Fox – Lastminute.com and the UK government's digital champion, Kyle MacDonald – One Red Paperclip, Jess Greenwood – Contagious Magazine and R/GA, Zhang Minhui – Sohu.com.cn and Stephen Fry – a celebrity active in social media.
Even though the pioneers profiled in this book have accomplished amazing things there is still room for new developments, and it will be interesting to see how the digital landscape continues to evolve over time. People who read this book might be inspired to develop the next “big thing” after learning about the individual pioneers of digital. The last section of the last chapter of the book outlines ten steps to becoming a digital pioneer from the people who got there, starting with “you don't have to be original, but relevant and ‘of the moment’” (p. 207) and and ending with “create experiences that are fun, engaging and stimulate an emotional response and keep it simple” (p. 208).
While the profiles in this book cover a wide range of topics related to the digital landscape and cover its development over time, they do not seem to be presented in any particular order. It would have been helpful to present the profiles in a more logical order, either chronologically or by grouping the profiles by more narrow categories such as internet search, e-commerce, social media, marketing/advertising, etc. Chronological order would help to provide some perspective on how far things have progressed since the early stages of the development of the digital world. Grouping the articles by category would be useful for those readers who want to focus on a particular aspect of the digital space.
This book would be a good resource for those who want to understand the history and development of the digital world and for those with a creative or innovative spirit who might be looking for insights and inspiration on how to develop the “next big thing” on their own or for the company they already work for. This book might also be an interesting resource for academics who teach courses related to entrepreneurship, marketing innovation, or any aspect of internet/digital marketing.
