I rebranded this blog asSocial, Agile, and Transformation overten years ago, an instinctive change based on three fundamental changes I was sensing in the nature of business.

At the time, I led and witnessed a fundamental shift in how companies interacted with customers, the collaborative practices required to drive competitive advantage with data and technology, and how all organizations had to start digitally transforming their business models.

Since then, I’ve written plenty about agile and transformation, but relatively little about social.

Social Expertise in Models, Margeting, Policies, and Algorithms

Understanding social networking and digital collaboration is a important undertaking. Your own experiences are an insignificant blip in the blogosphere, and understanding how to drive influence on one network is only a stepping stone. To write about social, you need expertise in the business models, social algorithms, privacy policies, and scalable digital marketing practices. You must have access to statistically significant research, have a deep understanding of where social networks provide global humansitic values, and recognize where there are significant incentives to abuse and commit fraud.

I was seeking this expertise when I read The Hype Machine by Sinan Aral. The book is receiving one of my “Must-reads of 2020,” and only one other book I read this year received this distinction.

The Hype Machine Delivers Insights for Digital Leaders

Want to learn about what we know about Russian interference in the 2016 election? Want to understand how and why fake news propagates through social connections? Want to learn about how poorly formulated regulations impact society? Or maybe you want the basics on the neuroscience behind social networking, how experienced digital marketers hyper-personalize their campaigns, or the future potentials of social graph interoperability.

You’ll get all of that and a lot more from The Hype Machine from Sinan,  Professor of Management, Marketing, IT, and Data Science at MIT. Very few people have such broad expertise, direct experience as an entrepreneur, VC, and data scientist at social networks, and also background from working closely with Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, WeChat, and The New York Times.

The Hype Machine from many experts including Richard Stengel, Seth Godin, Hilary Mason, Andrew McAfee and other experts and authors.

Leaders that recognize the imporance social networking to their business and careers (i.e. almost all leaders) should read The Hype Machine.