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The Magnet Effect

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The Magnet Effect

Attracting and Retaining an Internet Audience Today and in the Future

McGraw-Hill,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

“The new Internet logic: Build an audience and then look for something to sell.”

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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Create a product. Find someone to buy it. That’s a pattern that’s been pretty consistent since the beginning of civilization. But popular technology guru Jesse Berst says that the Internet has reversed this eternal sequence of commerce. The new logic: Build an audience and then find something to sell to it. That concept is at the core of The Magnet Effect, a brief, hands-on guide to Internet business and marketing. The book illuminates the strategies and tools that have come to define the Internet play, intelligently making a case as to why companies like Amazon.com are worth their multi-billion-dollar valuations even as they are hemorrhaging cash. Berst combines a broad, strategic overview and direct how-to advice in an effective manner that allows getAbstract to recommend this book to both e-commerce veterans and Internet neophytes.

Summary

Internet Influence

The Internet has changed our lives in six crucial ways that define how everyone eventually will do business, socialize and educate children.

  • Product cycles are shorter and shorter. The time between new products is compressing, especially in the fast-moving world of software.
  • We increasingly feel a time poverty, since we have less free time than our parents and grandparents did. Time has become the most precious commodity for people in developed countries, both for enjoyment and for work.
  • The world is experiencing an information overload. We have created more data in the past 30 years than in the previous 3,000.
  • People experience attention deficiency, since we have too little time and too much information. Thus, your company will have an increasingly difficult time getting the attention of consumers.
  • Time and geography barriers are disappearing. The Internet operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and people all over the world can compete with each other.
  • Consumers are more informed, since they easily can find the information they want on Web sites. Everyone can compare prices globally.

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About the Author

Jesse Berst a technology columnist. His Anchor Desk newsletter on ZDNet draws almost two million readers daily. He is featured regularly on Bloomberg radio and his weekly columns soon will be appearing in Gannett newspapers nationwide. He has been a keynote speaker at leading industry seminars and conferences.

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