I picked up a few new books from the MIT Press bookstore and will be sharing my thoughts and impressions of them as I finish them.

First in the queue this weekend was The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done.

Thanks to the subtitle, you’ve got a good grasp of the book’s premise. The author, Peter Miller, is senior editor of National Geographic, and wrote the book very much like a solid long read from the publication. The only thing missing was the vivid photography.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and how Peter weaved together various research findings from the study of ants, bees, starlings, and fish. As I read the book, it triggered insights into the Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street movements, while also making me realize what’s been driving behaviors I’ve seen come from people using online and mobile technologies. Anyone wanting to improve what they’re doing to mobilize people will benefit from these insights, too.

Here is a collection of notes I took while reading this 269-page book:

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My friend and fellow disruptor, Brian Reich, has written a very important book, Shift and Reset, which is a MUST READ for anyone who wants to lead an organization in this hyper-connected age.

You can get a flavor for what his book has to offer by viewing these slides he put together outlining 12 Big Ideas for 2012.  And be sure to buy the book – it makes a great holiday gift to yourself or someone you know.

Briefly and simply, Facebook Timeline is amazing!

What launched globally this week, Facebook now affords anyone to post one’s complete life stream in chronological order. With that the ueber-popular social network introduces a powerful new form to feed back and forward one’s entire live story in one fell swoop.

Think your teenage 1978 Miss America picks alongside your favorite cheesy 80s movie flicks side by side your current day Philip Glass CD collection. All neatly timelined in chronological order and interspersed with plenty *foursquared* bars and clubs revealing exactly when, where and who you’ve been hanging out with over the years.

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Here we are. You and I, plus another 6,999,999,998 more people. Today statistically we’ve reached the 7 billion population mark. What matters now is what is next.

As part of my Deutsche Telekom responsibilities, I recently took part in helping to shape what has become the 7 Billion Actions campaign under the auspices of the United Nations Population Fund - an innovative campaign that is building awareness around the opportunities and challenges of a world of seven billion.

As an individual as much as a representative of a large, multi-national communications provider, population-relevant issues and causes matter to me probably as much as they do to you.

To that end, the social media team at the UNFPA sent along the following tips how everyone across the social graph and blogosphere can help contribute to the cause:

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#1 Thing You Need to Learn from This Post:

Social entrepreneurship is mindset that can be applied to any sector.

A More Detailed Exploration:
Are you as fascinated with the rise of the concept called “social entrepreneurs” as I am? It seems like in the past few years, more people have begun to identify themselves and others with this label – almost like a new fashion brand.  Just as you may have noticed being a startup or entrepreneur is quite the thing these days, you’ll notice being a “social entrepreneur” will turn even more heads.

[If you happen to be someone who views her/himself as a social entrepreneur, I would highly recommend you read Brian Reich's advice to you. It's timely and very appropriate.]

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Social networks are funny things: value to the user is determined less by the quality of the network itself than by the number of that user’s friends also using the network.

To put it another way: if show business is like “high school with money”, so it is (even more so) with social networks – popularity is everything.

In fact, it’s almost a zero-sum game: myspace kills off friendster, facebook kills off myspace…  It seems there can only be one dominant social network at a time (twitter coexists peacefully only because it’s more of an ‘opt-in broadcast network’ than a social network).

In this context, at a few months in, it’s time to ask: will google+ end up replacing facebook?  I’ve been a member of the beta  since day one (more on that here).  While I’ve yet to actually post anything (full disclosure: social networks are more interesting to me as a medium and cultural phenomenon than as something I’d choose to use personally) – I have had a ringside seat from which to witness user uptake of the service.

Below is my firsthand account of how’s it’s been going so far – at least from amongst my ‘circle’ (sorry, couldn’t resist) of friends and colleagues…

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On German exposure to credit crises of all flavors: North American and European  Michael Lewis is the author of several non-fiction bestsellers chronicling the current plight of the US and global financial markets.  Last month he wrote a thought-provoking piece in Vanity Fair that not only covers not Germany’s central role in the US (sub-prime mortgage-driven) and European (sub-prime EU partner-driven) debt crises, but also speculates on some cultural issues that may have might have contributed to the extent of the country’s involvement.  As a US expat living in Germany, I felt that while a few of his points in that regard were a bit of a stretch, he gets a lot right.  Agree or disagree, an interesting and well-written piece.

If you read one article on Steve Jobs’ legacy…  read David Carr’s piece in the New York Times.  Enough said.

A picture’s worth a thousand words… especially when it’s a gigapixel picture.  No reading required to get the point here on what the combination of hi-resolution photography and social media (or even worse, facial recognition technology) could mean to privacy.  Not just ‘online’ privacy, but physical privacy – in public. 

Just click here (it takes a bit for the image to load), and zoom into the crowd.  Keep zooming – until the little blue icons (and the implications of this technology on personal privacy) become clearly visible.

On Monday, August 8, SXSW.com will announce the launch of the SXSW Interactive Scholarship 2012 program. While last year’s scholarship program was limited to nonprofits, this year’s iteration expands its focus to recognize individuals from all sectors and from anywhere in the world who are using new media to push the boundaries of tackling community problems. Nonprofit leaders, grassroots organizers, individual citizens, and civic-minded entrepreneurs are all eligible.

Individuals can begin to submit their essay anytime between Monday, August 8, and Friday, August 26. SXSW and CauseShift will lead the review and selection process with the five scholarship recipients to be announced on Monday, September 19. Each of the five recipients will receive a complimentary SXSW Interactive badge for the 2012 SXSW Interactive Festival.

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Since I’ve already been on a Google+ few weeks now (I had an invitation to try out the service the day before it launched – one of the small perks of writing a tech blog), and since I’ve already received an email invitation to try out the next brand new web service (the US rollout of Spotify),  I guess it’s about time I shared my impressions of Google’s planned Facebook-killer.

During the first day or two of Google+, you really had to “know a guy who knows a guy” to get an account, but if the recent escalation in the number of friends and family showing up there is any indication, they’re scaling up the service more aggressively than they did with Gmail a few years ago.

Although they’re keeping quiet about the numbers, some recent independent research estimates that about 20 million people have signed up as of this past weekend.  Just to put that in context, Facebook claims over 750 million active users.  On the surface, that would seem to represent some pretty substantial  inertia in Facebook’s favor – but the tipping point syndrome can be pretty brutal in the social networking world (imagine a cocktail party in which each guest can anonymously and painlessly bail out of if it turns out the cool kids are heading on over to the party down the street).

This point  is not lost on Facebook – in fact, Mark Zuckerberg is “keeping his enemies close” via a Google+ account of his own that’s ended up in over a quarter of a million Google+ user’s Circles – but has yet to contain a single post.

After playing around with it a bit, I think Google+ can objectively be said to have the edge over Facebook in terms of simplicity and transparency – and on a more subjective level, I believe there are a few other things to like about Google+, as well…

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