I’ve been reading the book Planet Google by Randall Stoss
The book is a pretty standard business tome on an interesting technology company, but it has one part particularly worth recommending: Chapter 1: Open and Closed, which describes the “open” web world that Google endorses, and the threat that a company (in this case Facebook) with a large enough Walled Garden presents.
I wouldn’t necessarily have thought that Facebook was even in competition with Google (much less a real threat), but the chapter describes the growing competition give a framework for understanding Open Social.
I don’t know yet if the whole book is worth a read, but the first chapter sure is — if nothing else than as a means of describing some of the competition and tactics in the post “2.0” web.