This was a very interesting book that looks at our internet usage and how our interests can be both analyzed and manipulated by researchers, marketers, businesses, etc. Despite being a book about statistics it was usually fairly easy to read. Occasionally it became a little bogged down for my taste, but overall it was enlighting. ( )

A good look at internet data and how a business/person is trying to use it for finding patterns in the behavior of people. The chapters take you through his process of understanding what factors have to be accounted for in looking at the data. After reading, I did want more emphasis on the problem of trying to understand motivations behind what we click, but again it was a good process. I just wish I had a job where I could interact with data like the author gets to analyze. Must be fun. ( )

This was a fascinating book. It's amazing how much data is collected by those watching the internet. Tancer uses a very relaxed conversational style to explain some of the more technical and broader ideas. It's not hard to get lost when he's explaining the parameters for a dataset that he's compiled to help back up an argument.

This is a great read if you are at all looking to position yourself or a business interest online. At a minimum, you'll look at areas of the country differently when it comes time to take action online. The back few sections are really the most valuable for this. In fact, I think I could have read the parts on early adopters and targeting markets and been just fine.

Some of the points he makes early on in the book seem a bit more "circumstantial". Such as stating "why" people were searching for certain things and not just mapping out the trends (especially in the area of politics/religion).

So I'd recommend this book to anyone in business or following online trends. It is an easy read for both. ( )

This is a rather breezy book about the current use of the internet, particularly when people do searches. The author tries to get into why people do the web searches they do, and it is not always intuitively obvious. This book comes out of his work at Hitwise. In some ways this is a book about the use of google and other search engines. He spends time talking about porn seekers, prom dress finders, dieters, celebrity worship and fears people have. Besides the well-known 80-20 rule, he brings forthe the idea of the 1-9-90 spread, where only 1% of people are active contributors to a site (like Wikipedia), 9% are occasional contributos, and 90% are lurkers. Myself, I would be in the 1% of LT users, and in the 9% with my use of Angfran (Anglican Franciscan) or Wikipedia, and in the 90% for everything else. At the end of the book, he discusses the Early Adopters, and the Super-Connectors. ( )

Bill Tancer is "the king of ...online research". He takes the data he collects and uses it, among other things, to help the business world interpret the data to more effectively market their products. In the process, he is realizing and sharing the huge differences the internet has made in our daily lives, in the commercial world and in every aspect of government. Decision-makers in all of these areas go about making these decisions based on a whole new way of finding, knowing and interpreting data that was never available to us before. With humor and insight, Tancer explains how we are using the data we find online and why it even matters.

This was a very readable book and very eye-opening to me. ( )