This book is a required text for one of my courses. If you are not at all tech savvy or have never used a computer before, this text might be useful, but for my 400 level course this ranks as an inappropriate text because it attempts to provide a very broad overview of the most basic starting information for a wide array of social media. That's not really the author's fault of course, and it's not actually the reason for my 1 star rating. I rated the book as 1 star for the author's poor utilization of his own suggestions for his book companion site. This is actually considered a Wiley higher ed text book, and my interactions with the text's constant references to the author companion site generated numerous contacts with Wiley Technical Support attempting to unravel the problems with the content (both online and print) for this text. At the end of the day, the only thing Wiley support could tell me was this: "we will try to contact the author to try to resolve discrepancies between the book and the author companion site".
The text has a fair amount of "churn" where content is covered, and then covered, and then covered yet again OR where readers are directed to a companion site to review content that can't be accessed.
For example, chapter 9 covers podcasts, and then chapter 10 again hashes out podcasts with the chapter heading "Got Audio?" The same thing was done for Vlogs and "Got Video?".
The in-chapter international vignettes often had no relationship to the chapter they were in. Rather than including an international vignette in each chapter, I think it would have been far more useful to consolidate the vignettes into chapters where the content had some relevance.
The chapter on SIMS probably had far more relevance to the text than the chapter on MMOs. The chapter on MMOs could have effectively been eliminated from the text since the author freely concedes that the only real income-generating activity associated with most MMORPGs is considered against the terms of service of most games. It should come as no surprise that Blizzard declined to participate in The Social Media Bible, sadly for me, I can't read their response because it's detailed at the author companion site (which I will get to soon enough; the suggestion to read Blizzard's response is on p. 381 of the book). After spending much of the MMO chapter detailing the ins and outs of Wow & EverQuest (including author explanations of tank, CC, etc.) for the games where a relevant discussion could have been created regarding in game ads, the author simply glossed over this topic with a couple of paragraphs at the end of the chapter!
In numerous places in the text, the author repeatedly refers to free resources on his book companion website, along with QR codes (ostensibly only readable by mobile devices). The QR codes are ineffectual because the author's companion site is not compatible with mobile devices. The conspicuous placement of the QR codes leads readers to believe that mobile devices should work with the text. After several failed attempts at this, I contacted Wiley support only to be told that no, the author's companion site was not compatible with mobile devices and is meant to be used either with a desktop or laptop computer. When I indicated that QR codes implied mobile device compatibility and provided numerous page numbers with QR codes on them, Wiley support told me they would contact the author. (In fairness, the QR codes navigate to the companion site; however, they do not go to the resource referred to in the text. They go to a login page that users will not be able to login with a mobile device because it's not compatible.)
For example, on page 212 the book says, "A great resource for creating and distributing podcasts is Podcasting for Dummies by Tee Morris, Evo Terra, Adn Dawn Miceli (see Figure 9.1). Go to [...] to download the Podcasting for Dummies primer e-book. It's free!"
When you attempt to do this, you can never navigate to the intended resource. This happens over and over again (typically I was actually routed to a completely different book, after multiple redirects), which is frustrating. I usually don't spend much time worrying about companion materials, but when they are repeatedly suggested in a text, I tend to at least give it a diligent try--for my effort I received nothing.
The primary purpose of the author's site is not to enable access to free companion materials, but to sell his other books and services. While I certainly understand the motivation, QR codes that lead to a login portal and NOT the item they are indicating in the text that they are supposed to lead you to (as well as the fact that I was told by Wiley technical support that the resources were not compatible with mobile devices) or suggestions to access materials that are inaccessible will make it near impossible to utilize these resources either for study or course assignments. For those who happen to stumble into this book who are not in a course, I suppose this will be even more confusing because suggestions to navigate to the author companion site are on nearly every page of the book (with every other page, or sometimes 2 page gaps for variation).
In many places in the book, the author discusses the importance of having a site that routes folks to engaging or useful content for the end user, to encourage further interaction and perhaps generate revenue. In the chapter on building a site, Safko notes that getting people to stay at a site to click through is the primary goal, so ensuring usability, etc. is a high priority. However, the repeatedly mentioned author companion site does none of these things. Login leads you to the wrong book. Clicking on the free resources links forces you to subscribe to e-mails that don't contain the referenced free resources. In some cases, links are simply dead, or the path to try to navigate to resources is so convoluted it becomes impossible to complete the task suggested in the book. The QR codes, as mentioned previously, are not compatible with mobile device
In short, I began to wonder why in the world these suggestions about how to succeed with social media were not being utilized at the author's companion site. While the testimonies are front and center at the companion site, and at least according to the author's speaking schedule, his speaking engagements are sold out, I found it interesting that as of today Safko has a mere 254 likes on Facebook. I live in a modest sized town, and we have food carts and individual pets with more likes.
Mind you, Safko has actually done some amazing development work on his own creating some of the earliest operating systems to help the physically challenged navigate computers and control their environment (such as early voice recognition software, technology to turn lights on and off via voice, etc.). The man is clearly not an idiot. I think this was part of what I found so maddening, knowing that Safko is actually very smart and has been involved in tech a long time, but had intentionally created churn within his text and his site (which the text constantly advises we visit) in such a manner that he wasn't actually going to sell anything effectively.
In any case, if you really need guidance with social media and have never used a computer before, I don't recommend this book--the constant references to the companion site will prove to be too taxing for a tech novice. For those with some tech savvy, I still don't recommend this book--the constant references to the companion site that does not live up to the author's recommendations about how to do social media marketing "right" will eventually become so glaringly inconsistent that you will wonder if anything Safko says should be taken to heart.
