Even Better than My Wired Review...

...is my review by Paul C(K)arr. I know it was hard for him to be nice, so that makes it doubly special. Maybe even triply. For people (my mom and husband) who don't want to read all of the SXSW related stuff about me in the post, here's the PG version of his book review (on the jump). See, now if i could just tie every Sarah-Lacy-Twitter-Hater (tm) down and MAKE them read my book, they'd love me too!! Seriously, thanks Paul. From someone who knows the struggle of writing-for-pay, it means a lot.

An added bonus was that I got to take away the book, giving me a sneak preview of its contents ahead of next month's official publication. It's always awkward reading something written by someone you know and like as - no matter how terrible it is - you have to say it's great. Fortunately Sarah had thought long and hard about that problem and had come up with the perfect solution - she'd written a book that's really bloody good. So good in fact that I read it from cover to cover on my flights between San Francisco and Boston. I couldn't put it down.

 

The first thing that struck me was the level of access Sarah has, and the effort she's clearly put into research. On two significant occasions in the past - Kevin Rose's cover and Zuckerberg's keynote - she's been accused of being too friendly with her subjects. Of drinking the Kool-Aid if you like (whatever that is). There's no doubt about it, Rose and Zuckerberg (amongst others) come across as pretty likeable in the book - perhaps because, all told, they are. But still, it's far from a circle jerk. Really far from it. For almost every occasion where a 'web 2.0 superstar' tells their side of a story, Sarah has finagled a similar level of access with an enemy or former business partner to get the other side. It is - in other words - both fair and balanced.

But above all of that, it's fascinating to read - really informative, even for those who know their shit about Web two. At JFK I bought a copy of Fast Company, knowing that I would probably finish Sarah's book before I landed. There's a nice detailed cover piece on Gina Bianchini - the 'Web 2.0 hottie' who co-founded Ning with Marc Andreessen. Reading it just now in the bar at the Hyatt in Boston, I found myself nodding politely but not really feeling like I'd learnt much. The reason? Informative as the Fast Company piece was, the story of Ning - and Gina and Marc - is told much more engagingly and behind-the-scenesly in Sarah's book. As is the story of Digg - which even prompted me to watch an episode of Digg TV on the plane (think Baddiel and Skinner Uninstalled) - and Slide and Twitter and Six Apart and Yelp and, yes, of course, Facebook. If anything, there's just too much information and too many interesting stories to fit into one book.