This readable and clearly argued book by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff explores one of today’s hottest technology areas ­ social networking ­ and explains how businesses can benefit from it.

One of the key themes of Groundswell is how social networks can empower users, and therefore customers, and this is examined in the scene-setting opening section. To hammer home their message, the authors pay particular attention to Kevin Rose, the founder of news aggregation site Digg.com. One of the poster boys of a new generation of web services entrepreneurs, Rose was at the sharp end of the Web 2.0 revolution when a sensitive piece of “news” was removed from the Digg site by the site operators.

When this happened, Digg users spread the offending article across other sites and blogs. As a result, the story re-appeared on Digg, and once again all traces of it were removed. When Digg got tired of repeating this process it relented, giving editorial control back to its users. “Caught between a lawsuit and its own audience, Digg bowed to the greater force: the audience,” write Li and Bernoff. Alienate these users at your cost, is the message here. “People on the internet showed they were in charge,” is how the authors sum up this episode.

This people power can, and does, unsettle some organisations. “People were using tools to link up with each other in various ways, and those trends were threatening to companies,” the authors write. But companies can also benefit from this, they argue, adding that the worst thing firms can do is ignore it.

The authors offer firms a structured plan for harnessing social networks. They start by stressing the importance of setting clear objectives first: “Ask yourself, ‘What are my customers ready for?’ and then ‘What are my objectives?’. Once you know that, then you can start planning.”

The authors stress that the term “customers” in this instance is not limited to external parties, but can just as easily refer to internal staff, because social networking applications can be deployed as productivity tools as well as being adapted to sales and marketing roles.

Any organisation thinking of taking advantage of social networking will find plenty of food for thought in this book.

Authors: Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 978-1-4221-2500-7