Book Cover

The Internet is an open system: it works because you don't need to ask anyone's permission to be creative and because every address is equally accessible, whether it's the dot-com of the world's largest multinational corporation, the dot-gov of the world's most powerful country, or YourFirstWebsite.com.

# Review

This book covers Ohanian's background including his childhood and eventually his founding of Reddit (one of my greatest time sinks). The book argues devotedly for the principle of free internet, against legislations such as PIPA and SOPA.

What struck me at first is how incredibly readable the book is; the book was perhaps one of the books with the best UX I've read this year. I liked how the subheadings were blue instead of black and I liked how there were pictures to break up the text. The language used is very quirky and colloquial, and is aimed at a general, non-technical audience.

In the book, Ohanian shares many of the things he learned on his entrpreneurial journey, as well as many anecdotes for why it's important to have a free internet. Here are my three top takeaways:

• Social proof is important, Ohanian talks about Adam grabbing coffee with airlines, directly emailing the CEO of United, and buying chocolate for secretaries. A corollary of that is to treat users well, Ohanian spoke of commenting on posts mentioning Reddit and thanking the author, as well as emailing every top poster of Reddit. I think the main idea is to treat everyone well, and be genuine in helping others (especially journalists).

• Ignore the competition; Digg eventually failed and the competitors which tried to copy Digg failed too.

• Have comfortable swag; coming from someone who hasn't bought a T-shirt since the beginning of university thanks to recruiters and hackathons, this advice is very contrarian. While many companies bombard people with their swag, Ohanian's advice is to have have quality swag and to not give it out randomly. Swag like t-shirts should be used to establish connections.

While a bit dogmatic, as a computer science student interested in entrepreneurship, I do agree with most of his assessment on having an open internet. I did gain a bit of value reading about his anecdotes such as with Zach Anner and with donorschoose.org, but most of his main arguments I've already read elsewhere. One idea which I disagree with is his stance on digital piracy; I do believe that artists and creators should have mechanisms which incentivize them to create, even when the medium is digital; I don't believe that said artists and creators should rely on donations and the altruism of their fans to make a living. At the same time, I also abhor "gatekeepers" and bureaucracy which, like parasites, syphon value away from the creators; I also dislike DRM, which bloats and slows down applications.

I really like the subsription model for content as its a compromise between the tradition rigid model and the new anarchasistic free-for-all model; I found the email from Sean Parker, the founder of Napster to Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify very enlightening on the relationship between the traditional gatekeepers (recording labels) and the new digital ecosystem. Although there has been some controversy between artists and Spotify, I'd be curious if this current model will be sustainable in the longer term, and how the distribution platform for content will affect the content itself (shorter songs, etc). I'm also interested on what the next distribution platform will be, as technology becomes even more advanced.

# Conclusion

A very entertaining book, great for a non-technical audience or people unfamiliar with SOPA/PIPA. I wished he talked more about his experiences running and managing Reddit, as well as his second lesser-known venture, as there are many lessons which can be gleaned.

# Overall rating: 7.8

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