Reading Virtual Minds – mind blowing book review

Online behavior is not offline behavior done online. This is what Joseph Carrabis explains with a scientific rigour in his book: Reading Virtual Minds, Volume I. He takes the reader through a journey from the basics of human behavior and communication to how do users interact with the online world. Once the scientific basis is understood he takes the reader through a set of experiments and case studies on how online behavioral targeting can be used for increasing performance

What I loved the most about the book is that it comes with a scientific approach towards web analytics and behavioral targeting. On one side, Joseph has a strong background in sociology, anthropology, psychology and many other interconnected sciences. On the other side he loves the web. It was just a matter of time before putting them together (around 15 years of research, actually). The Internet is a very complex communication medium. He  really treats it as such.

The book is mind blowing. At every page you find yourself saying out loud “Ohh Common, that can’t be real!” just that at the next page everything is explained and becomes common sense. Imagine this: the behavioral targeting software he built manages to identify if a user who logs in to his account really is him or is it somebody else having access to his login credentials based only by the the way the user interacted with the website. What about managing to identify the field of interest of the visitors just by the way they browsing through a website. Mind blowing, I tell you.

While many web analytics and behavioral targeting books out there are rather about cookies, numbers and statistics, for Joseph everything is about people. That’s why this book was so different than anything I have read so far.

Another thing that strikes about the book are the reviews that come from people like Jim Sterne, Anil Batra, Bryan Eisenberg, Robbin Steif and Angie Brown. These guys are worldwide top notch when it comes to web communication and analytics.

How come the book is not in top 10 web marketing best sellers on Amazon, you might ask. I really have no idea as it really should be there. The only explanation I can find is that the book is some sort of the “Ace in the sleeve” for many top marketers. It’s part of their secret of why they are so good at what they do. I don’t like cheating in poker (unless I am the only one doing it ) so I highly recommend this book to everybody. It will put some science facts in your work.